I’m going to be on High Willhays from about 12:30 tomorrow, 17m and 20m CW. If we can manage a QSO it will be a quick complete for you I think. 
I’ll also use a 2m HT but that might be a stretch to reach Yorkshire.
I think the skip will be wrong for 20m and 17m.
Not sure what time I’ll be out yet, but probably late morning.
73, Colin
Good point, I’m only taking a couple of QCX radios so limited to higher bands.
Whernside, G/NP-004, Friday 25 February 2022
The forecasts this winter seem to be all about high winds. I saw a window of calm predicted before the wind picks up again over the weekend, so I took my chance to grab some more winter bonus points from one of my nearest hills.
There had been a light sprinkling of snow, nothing too serious, but enough to make the landscape look pretty.
Thankfully the WX forecast seemed to be pretty accurate and the wind was very light. There was a snow drift against the wall on the summit and the fence had hoar frost on it. Needless to say it was quite chilly!
I decided to operate my MTR-5B on 40m and I had a steady pile up, working 28 stations in around 25 minutes. For a brief moment I considered calling CQ on 20m but my brain had started to slow down and I was feeling the cold. I reckoned that 28 QSOs was a pretty decent haul. Band conditions on 40m seemed pretty good and stable.
Thanks to all chasers and I will probably activate Whernside again in warmer temperatures and offer more bands.
73, Colin
7 Likes
Well done, I was on a sunnier and snowless summit in Devon for two hours at the same time and was getting cold towards the end. My CW skills aren’t up to the level to do so many QSOs in the short time you achieved - congratulations!
Hi John,
I’ve been activating with CW for over ten years now, so I’m quite used to the format. I’d be pretty useless at normal QSOs, as I only operate when on SOTA activations. I’ve never had a home shack, it would be awesome to have a permanent set up but I’ve never made it happen. I have a small hut which I have dedicated to my radio hobby but I use it only for storage and construction.
73, Colin
2 Likes
Ingleborough, G/NP-005, Tuesday 1st March 2022
SOTA was launched on 2nd March 2002. Unfortunately it took me two years to discover SOTA, but it has been a massive part of my life since then. I wanted to celebrate the 20th anniversary of SOTA with an activation using radios that would have been available at the time of SOTA’s launch.
I’m working (tomorrow) on the actual date of the anniversary, so with nice weather forecast today, I took the opportunity to activate Ingleborough this morning.
I started off on 40m with my Small Wonder Labs SW-40+. I turned the rig on for a while to warm up whilst I got sorted and I noticed a 40m CW spot on SOTAwatch for HB9CLT/P on HB/AR-004. I wound the VFO down a little (10 turn potentiometer, quite tedious!) and I was pleased that I could hear Tom calling CQ. I threw my call sign in without even checking the speed etc, Tom came straight back to me, so my first QSO was an S2S.
I’d taken all of my talismans, including the lucky anvil, I figured that I’d need all the luck I could get running a rig with 2w of output. Thankfully Richard @G4TGJ gave me my 4th contact after only 7 minutes of operating.
I managed 17 QSOs on 40m before I had no more callers. I didn’t beg for more contacts as I was short on time, squeezing my activation in between school runs, and Ingleborough is a sizeable walk from whichever angle you attack it.
I fired up the Small Wonder Labs SW-20+ after changing the links on my home made dipole. My SW-20+ is set at 1w output, so I wasn’t sure how many contacts I would get. I was pleasantly surprised to net 16 QSOs on 20m, taking my combined total of 33 QSOs. The best contact was with SV2RUJ, at around 1600 miles - a QSO worthy of a certificate!
The weather and views were fantastic - a great day in celebration of SOTA!
73, Colin
10 Likes
An empty Ingleborough Colin, apart from you - great! Lovely weather too. I was surprised at the strength of your 40m signals despite your low power, a true 579 into Pickering. Twenty years tomorrow since Richard G3CWI/P activated Long Mynd G/WB-005. I was No.3 QSO of the five he made. I’m not sure why I had that QSO, maybe Richard was spotted on the DX Cluster or I just tuned across his CQ SOTA? I cannot recall why I made that QSO now, as I knew nothing about SOTA being created at that time.
73 Phil
2 Likes
Ha! Ingleborough soon filled up! It was busy as I left just after 12pm.
Thanks for the QSO
73, Colin
2 Likes
Ingleborough has a habit of being deserted one moment and then inundated from all directions the next. I hope to be there on Friday although I don’t think the weather will be as good as Colin got today.
1 Like
Helvellyn, G/LD-003, and Red Screes, G/LD-017, Saturday 5th March
- see report on LD Weekend thread.
Rombalds Moor, G/NP-028, Monday 7th March 2022
My neighbour has been having a spring clean and we ended up accepting a broken rabbit hutch! My wife’s sister has a guinea pig, so I went to the builder’s merchants and bought a box of screws and a pair of hinges and spent a small time swearing! I did figure out why the hutch had been broken in the first place and I managed to reposition the hinges so the lid could be open easily. I like fixing stuff.
My wife’s sister lives near Haworth, not far from Keighley, where I lived previously. My car has a big boot, so I loaded up the hutch and set off on an epic road trip (about 80 miles round trip). There was also a couple more reasons for my trip; a little while ago Richard @G4TGJ stated that one of his goals was to do more activations of Rombalds Moor G/NP-028 than me, so I needed to move the goalposts and also I needed to pick up some groceries - Keighley the nearest town has plenty of supermarkets.
Just for fun I packed my LA1KHA PP3 powered home brew CW rig, I’d already done Rombalds Moor this year, so this wouldn’t be a points scoring activation.
Rombalds Moor is pretty much a drive on summit which is sandwiched between Keighley and Ilkley.
30m sounded to be quite busy and I tried every crystal that I had until I went back to the first choice of 10.116 MHz RockMites tend to run a bit lower than marked frequency (but sometimes higher depending on the crystal characteristics), so I ended up on 10.1149 MHz. I heard ‘SOTA’ in CQ calls in my passband but not on my frequency. A little while ago I got into the RockMite firmware and altered it to boot up at a faster default speed, I was aiming for 20wpm, but the value needed is in hexidecimal, so I had to do a bit of maths. I was pleased to see that the RBN reported 21 wpm, so not a bad guess!
My battery is now quite old, I bought it from a physical Maplin store and they’ve been shut for at least four years. The best before date is 2017! Still after 111 QSOs including today’s 10 QSOs, the battery voltage is at 8.32v, so quite a bit of life left in it.
Most pleasing of all were the two summit to summit QSOs. I worked Mirko S52CU/P on S5/BI-001 and Bruno HB9CBR/P on HB/BL-014. I’ve been thinking about these two contacts all afternoon- for me this is quite magical, contacting radio friends with a home brew rig, mountain to mountain with a tiny battery. That teeny amount of voltage and current got my message to somebody else in a different country. 
A quick visit to Keighley ASDA and I was back home 15 minutes before my son walked in having cycled home from school.
12 Likes
Nice job wih the hutch. 
Pendle Hill, G/SP-005, Thursday 10th March 2022
I saw that there was a weather window to activate Pendle Hill on Thursday. It was forecast to be windy but dry. I’ve been building an SST transceiver from scratch and I wanted to give it a test.
I worked 10 stations on my SST-30, including 2 S2S. I did however find that the AF gain was seriously lacking. I was a bit disappointed. I’d taken my QCX-17 as a back up rig as I wanted to make sure I bagged the winter bonus points. The bonus points were already in the bag but I fired up the QCX-17 anyway. I’d only used the QCX-17 once before and I’d found the receiver a bit lacking then also. Anyway, K4DY was first in my 17m log and 11 others followed, taking my QSO total up to 22.
I didn’t take any photos other than a summit selfie as it was windy and cold!
3 Likes
Well done, as we’ve spoken about before the QCX Mini 17 seems to struggle on receive but there is no doubt 17m works well into NA at the moment. I now realise two NA operators tried calling me on a recent activation but I couldn’t make them out properly. My lack of CW skills doesn’t help of course.
Fair Snape Fell, G/SP-007, Sunday 13 March 2022
When I activated Wards Stone G/SP-003 with Matthew M5EVT at the end of January, I just couldn’t stop talking (sorry Matthew!). I don’t often get a chance to talk with a fellow radio amateur, especially one who is into home brewing. Somehow the subject cropped up about old CW rig designs and it transpired that both of us had thought about building an N6KR SST - Simple Superhet Transceiver. I had listened to the SolderSmoke podcast and heard Bill N2CQR talking about his SST-20 and I thought it would be a cool rig to try.
I had started buying components last year and added an SST on my list of things to build. Matthew set me a challenge, especially with the 20th Anniversary of SOTA happening, to build the SST by the time for our next joint activation, pencilled in for some time in early to mid March.
I started the SST-30 build almost straight away in the first days of February. I struggled to get the VXO working as it should, and then discovered that other builders had had the same problem. Eventually I got my VXO working by reducing the value of the capacitors in the oscillator circuit. I spent almost every spare moment throughout February building the SST. I was held back at times whilst waiting for obsolete parts to arrive via traders on ebay.
I had intended to finish the SST in time for the LD weekend on 5th/6th of March, but despite a late night on the Thursday before, I felt that the rig wasn’t working OK. I ran out of time, so I used my SW-20+ for the Lake District weekend, in celebration of 20 years of SOTA.
I ordered a piece of 4 inch wide brushed aluminium sheet and made up a case in style similar to the original SST. My case is a little bigger, I took the easy option and cut the 4 inch strip in half to give two 2 inch high front and back panels, the original SST is a bit smaller than this.
I thought I got the rig working this week and took it out up Pendle Hill on Thursday (see post above) however the audio was extremely low. I felt pretty disappointed with myself, I felt like a failure. Later that evening I sat in bed looking at the schematic and then I had an idea about what I might have done wrong. On Friday morning I raced in to the shack, once the kids were at school etc, and sure enough, my idea was correct - I’d soldered the audio amplifier IC gain set capacitor to the wrong pads! I reworked the circuit and then I found that I had much more audio gain and the cute little blinky LED on the front panel was now lighting up when sending, just as it should. The LED forms part of the AGC circuit and as the sidetone is actually the receiver receiving your TX signal, the AGC kicks in to reduce the audio level. I reckoned the rig was now sorted!
Matthew sent me a message yesterday saying that instead in our planned LD summit, should we switch to a more southerly summit where the forecast was better? I agreed and Fair Snape Fell was the chosen summit.
The drive from home to Fell Foot was really enjoyable, I’d had to get petrol so set off early and I found myself about 20 minutes ahead of schedule. I took my time whilst driving through the Forest of Bowland, taking in the scenery. So much wildlife about! Even though I was a bit early to the meeting point, Matthew arrived about 5 or 10 minutes later. As per last time, Matthew navigated whilst I quizzed him about technical issues!
The weather at the summit was nowhere near as bad as the forecast had lead us to believe, I didn’t even get my bothy bag out to sit on. I’d taken my SOTAbeams BandHopper 3 antenna as I didn’t want to bust my home brew dipole, the SOTAbeams one would be the sacrificial lamb in case of the predicted high winds. I was putting the antenna up when the croc clip for the 40m element fell off! Thank goodness I was using 30m!!
I fired up the SST aligning the VXO with a little dot I put on with sharpie pen, denoting 10.118MHZ. I could hear another SOTA activator on that frequency. Feeling a bit of time pressure, I decided not to try to work the activator for an S2S, instead I would move down the band a bit. From the RBN, I probably didn’t move down enough, I had ended up on 10.1175 MHz.
The rig was much better than before and QSOs were much easier although turning the AF gain up resulted in howling. Anyway, I worked 14 stations, including an S2S with Kurt HB9AFI on HB/VD-048.
I’ve just researched the SST howling problem on the Internet and it seems as though it’s a known problem right from the start. Thankfully there are some suggested fixes to try. It turns out that my SST is such a faithful tribute to the original, it has the original bad habits too! I think I will end up adding a Keyer chip, as my straight keying is pretty tortuous for chasers! I did want the true SST experience before adding any mods.
So I guess I just about met Matthew’s challenge, I did build the rig, and I did qualify a summit during our joint activation with it! Oh, by the way, the power output is about 1.5w from a 12v supply. Today I ran from a 3S lipo.
Colin
5 Likes
I may experiment with my QCX-17 front end, or I might just stick to my MTR-5B
Actually, I’ve been thinking that my FT817 needs an outing.
73, Colin
1 Like
Fountains Fell, G/NP-017, Monday 14th March 2022
My car was booked in at the garage for major work. I’d given up on any chance of SOTA, but I was back home with a courtesy car at 0930 in the morning. I was hanging some washing out and I thought it looked like a nice day, far better than the forecast suggested. My two band MTR was packed up already, with a charged 3S lipo as I’d carried it up Fair Snape Fell the day before as a back up option. I decided that I would take the chance to earn some more bonus points.
I quickly packed a rucksack with a few essentials and jumped in the little purple car. I set up a SOTAwatch Alert as soon as I had data signal whilst walking up the hill.
The summit was quiet except for a lady who was running with a spaniel tethered to a waist harness. We exchanged a few words after she enquired what I was doing, her boisterous spaniel meant that the conversation was short! Was nice to see another face though.
It was very much a quick activation, I did just one band, 40m, in order to gain the points. HF is working so well at the moment and even with QRP, it takes little effort to work the needed chasers. I made 9 QSOs in about 7 minutes and then packed up and headed home.
KD1JV Mountain Topper built in 2012
Pen y ghent, G/NP-010 (right) and Ingleborough G/NP-005 (left) seen in the distance from Fountains Fell.
3 Likes
That was a quick activation. I thought some of mine have been brief but I’m not in your league!
This won’t mean anything to those outside the UK but I note the MOT symbol on the side of your courtesy car looks like 3 summits. How appropriate, and two more to do with it.
Birks Fell, G/NP-031, Tuesday, 15th March 2022
The final day of winter bonus, pleasingly, the weather forecast was good, although a little bit windy.
As this was a planned activation, I had packed my rucksack the night before. About 5 years ago I ordered one of the KD1JV Soda Pop kits that Steve made available. For some unexplained reason, I tracked my kit to Australia before it disappeared from the tracking system, it never did turn up. 
The Soda Pop kits were supplied with two PCBs, one of the PCBs had several errors on it. Steve had given away the faulty PCBs as he had no use for them and suggested that they could be used as drinks coasters! Steve Nicholls, G0YKA, had given his ‘Coaster’ board to Dennis, G6YBC, at Kanga Products. Dennis heard about my missing kit and offered me the ‘Coaster’ board for free.
I ordered up some parts and I built up the Coaster PCB, correcting the errors with wire jumpers. I made a case from aluminium sheet. As the rig was named ‘Soda Pop’, I decided to go with a soft drink theme. Fanta is a brand associated with my friends at the Camb-Hams (long story!), so for fun I painted the rig orange and used a Fanta livery. The rig kind of worked but I’d had to use a different kind of 7 segment display and it was noisy. The proper kit version also had a noise problem, so eventually a firmware revision (Arduino sketch) was put out that turned off the display during idle time. Steve Weber also suggested that a transistor could be used to filter noise on the DC supply. I re-flashed my chip and modded in the DC supply filter. I also re-aligned the rig. I hadn’t tried the rig on air since I’d done all of that work.
Soda Pop 40m ‘Coaster’ in build.
Picture of revised PCB but showing DC filter mod, just below the 4 crystal IF filter, the same mod was done to the Coaster board.
Finished rig for 40m.
After my first kit never showed up, I contacted Steve Weber KD1JV and he agreed to send me another kit (his reserve kit, the last of the 50 made). I built the kit and added the upgrades but I procrastinated around building a case, especially as I moved house and the kit was packed up in a storage box. Last year I found the time to build a case, so went with a Tizer theme - the tag line being ‘The Great British Pop’ - see what I did there?
I’d had one QSO at my old house with the rig as a naked PCB, but I’d not tried it after the mods and putting it in a case.
For fun, I thought I’d use the Soda Pops for my activation of Birks Fell.
I went on 30m first with the Tizer flavoured rig and I was happy to get 17 contacts in the log. I wouldn’t say that the receiver is the best I’d ever used, but it sort of works. The user interface is a bit clunky and the keyer timing is a bit odd. I had an embarrassing moment whilst working Fred DL8DXL when my Radio Adventure Gear paddle started misbehaving. In addition to the odd keyer timing, the misbehaving key made it impossible to send Fred’s call correctly. Thankfully I’d taken a spare key and I was back in business! I emailed Fred afterwards to apologise.
I then connected up the Fanta flavoured rig and managed another 14 QSOs on 40m. I was pleasantly surprised that the receiver sounded just like the other rig. The display noise is still there, but much reduced and I can live with it. The display is rather dim for use in bright sunshine though, I could do with trying to track down a super bright display, as supplied with the proper kit.
I was very pleased with the quantity of contacts. I feel that my Soda Pop rigs firmly fall in to the novelty category. I think that there may be another firmware update to fix the keyer timing, so I guess I need to seek that out.
A fun day out!
Birks Tarn
Cairn near to the summit, where I operated from.
Looking down into Littondale
Well, thats it for winter bonus! Back to sporadic activating again!
6 Likes
Thanks Colin, great report and photos. 
Cheers to you 
Geoff vk3sq