Cool Conachcraig GM/ES-019
The current* Mrs. Wenseth has obtained an amateur radio licence. Yes, Mo is now MM7MOQ. Yesterday she announced she’d be maintaining a simpler garden this year, because she’d be coming to the hills with me at every opportunity. To put this in perspective, Mo was out in the garden all day every day last summer. *Terry Wogan joke
Sunday 10th May
So far, May has been cool, with the occasional bit of warm sunshine. Today was no different. T-shirt weather for 5 minutes every hour, then you put your big coat back on.
So, we set off from the Glen Muick car park at 10am with clothing for any occasion. The recently washed out bridge had been promptly and efficiently replaced by the estate (well it is the Scottish home of the King), but it did make me wonder why our council can’t do the same with the half a dozen bridges across the ‘shire that have been closed due to storm damage over the last few years.
new bridge abundment on the estate track
A group of Scouts and a group of Duke of Edinburgh Award young folk headed off down the trail ahead of us, away on their own adventures.
Estate road, forest path and then hill track (shared with the Lochnagar path) took us steadily up for 4.5km, the cool north westerly keeping us from over heating.
Soon enough we reached the cross roads. Turn left to Lochnagar and a further 4km climb. Turn right to Conachcraig and just 800m to the summit.
We turned right.
high on the track to Conachcraig
We reached the top at 1145, giving 15 minutes to set up and get on the air on time.
Except, Mo decided she wanted lunch first. Not wanting to get between my lady and her tuna sandwich, I set up my pole and 41’ EFRW, finding a nice chockstone in the summit granite slabs. Then I had a sandwich and then I called CQ on 40m.
It took longer to eat the sandwich than it did to activate the summit. 40m was slow and sparse with QSB and 20m was absolutely dead, with just @EA2DT Manuel making the log, and he was down in the noise. QRT called and now it was over to MM7MOQ to shine on 2m FM.
And shine she did, adding 8 calls on 2m FM, with a S2S with @MM7VXJ Jace, who was on a hill south of Perth. They first had a reasonable quality chat as Jace was ascending. Strangely, when he was on the summit, Mo dropped to 3/3 at his end.
As assistant to the operator, my task was to hold the mast/slim-G between my legs and to take a back up log. Yes, my fabulous multi-tasking wife is struggling a bit with listening to radio, talking to radio, looking at radio meter and writing stuff. I guess getting a license and plunging straight into the SOTA deep end is a baptism of fire. When I think back to my first few activations, I was worse….
MM7MOQ on the ft-3d
Despite less than 10 contacts each, we’d been on the summit for an hour and were getting rather cold. Windchill was -4°C. Of course, 15 minutes of that time was because Mo decided to wait on Jace to get a summit to summit. Changed priorities!
Lochnagar behind
the greatest SOTA activation of Conachcraig ever. A beautiful activation. Nothing else like this
down we go, wearing everything
We’d walked in the morning due to a worsening forecast. True enough, the cloud darkened, the breeze picked up and light rain flew in the wind. Snow was forecast later on.
Two hours later, back home, logs uploaded by the admin assistant while the Commander-in-Chief got the fire on and poured us a glass of wine each.
If this is our new routine, I can cope with that. I just wish it was a little warmer.
). I haven’t yet been out to attempt my first activation. Have been trying to find someone to go with first but can’t seem to find anyone, and haven’t yet plucked up the courage to go alone. Probably have to head out in to the hills on my own and just accept I’ll likely make a hash of it Plenty of summits to choose from seeing as I live on the edge of the Lake District. Watched your video on Gummer’s How not realising you were on the edge of the lake I work on (I’m a lake warden). Anyway just a simple message to you to say well done!
. And to everyone else, thank you for the kind words.