Well 2022 passed me by with alarming speed!
2022 has been a bit of a mixed year, yet again, I suppose that it’s mainly down to getting older. There have been some sad losses of good people within our community this year and my thoughts are with their loved ones.
I hit a patch of mild depression during late spring/early summer which seem to take a bit of shaking, I’ve never really felt like that before. I didn’t have an interest in anything. One day I forced myself to go into my shack and start building a RockMite. I have lots of RockMites and lots of parts for RockMites. I thought that building a familiar circuit would give me the pick up that I needed. Thankfully the RockMite project seemed to work and I was soon back out SOTA activating.
There have been some good aspects to 2022 too. I conquered Ben Nevis GM/WS-001 after many years about dreaming about doing it. The trip was costly but worth it and everything went to plan apart from the weather!
Ben Nevis with my weekend accommodation.
The diesel bill was £124.27 for the motorhome to Glen Nevis and back. The Glen Nevis campsite was £54 for two nights. My most expensive 11 points for SOTA! (Did a minor 1 point summit the day of arrival.)
I got the taste for ticking off stuff that had been on my list for some time. The loss of Guru, EA2IF, at 57 years, really made me think that you’ve got to seize every opportunity you get in life. I saw a great weather window and I had a couple of free days before the kids went back to school in September, so I re-attempted a wild camping trip that I had first tried over a decade ago. I didn’t have much time to prepare, I called in at an outdoor shop on my way home from work to buy a cooking pot and some gas for my stove, the next day I threw everything in my rucksack and headed up Ennerdale.
The Ennerdale trip was perfect! I couldn’t have asked for better weather and the views were breathtaking.
I activated Great Gable G/LD-005, Kirk Fell G/LD-014 and Pillar, G/LD-006 with my little MTR-2B over the two days.
Another thing ticked off was the third and final episode of M1BUU’s Extreme Ironing. I’d built a RockMite 20 for the first in the series, followed by an SMT transmitter in the second episode. For the final episode of the trilogy, I built a QCX-mini 20 transceiver on the summit of Great Whernside. The build went well but it did take a bit longer than I thought it would. I’d built some QCX minis before, but I’d not built one for quite some time. The QRP Labs build instructions are a bit ‘wordy’, which is fine if you’re building in the shack, but when you’re on top of a hill you just want to get the job done. I ended up writing my own concise build instructions.
The summit QCX-Mini build was a sucess and I qualified for the activation points with the radio constructed at the summit.
I will finish 2022 having scored 194 activator points, so I think it’s my best ever year. I’ve added a few uniques this year too.
73 to all and best of luck for 2023.
Colin
