On Saturday 14th September , I decided I would go to a different location than my usual park spot for “Mobile” chasing. I had planned to chase today anyway as the OE SOTA Day was my aim. This didn’t quite come to fruition as the bad WX had forced most of them to cancel.
I decided I would revisit a place I had activated back in 2010, GW/NW-062 Hope Mountain, obviously not using the Summit from my Car. We drove to a neighbouring Country Park Waun-Y Llyn, whose car park is approx 280m asl.
There is a quiet part of the car park, with lovely views to the south, that would be great for setting up the mobile shack, The FT857 is powered from a 44ah Car Battery in the boot and covers all bands from 160m to 70cm and I use a AT588 for the missing 4m band on FM. I have mobile whips for 60m, 40m, 20m and 17m, along with a dual band for 2m & 70cm’s plus a quarter wave whip for 4m.
The view from the shack was definitely more interesting than my usual place.
My Journey from home was testing my T-Beam Mobile Tracker G1JPV-6 and I was igated all the way to the country park. When we arrived , Elaine had accompanied me on this adventure as usual, we combined our other serious hobby of Geocaching as there was a couple of them at the park. My Heltec tracker G1JPV-7 was also igated as we looked for the cache close to the trig.
We didn’t find the cache as it was well overgrown with too many stinging nettles and hawthorns OUCH!
I did take a photo in the direction of the neighbouring SOTA Summits including Moel Famau, Foel Fenli, Moel Gyw, not visible but on the horizon is Snowden.
That Log Bench on the right of the photo, has a QR Code Remembrance tab, and was comfortable to sit on.
Now back to the matter in hand “Chasing Summits” My usual ops are to set up my Sota tracker app on my Phone which updates spots in real time. The usual happened today as most times and that was stations on 20m, so 20m whip attached and watched my phone then changed the 857 to the frequency and wait for a gap in the “booming alligators stage” .
Today I decided to drop the RSL in my call as I thought maybe " Golf Whiskey one Juliet Papa Victor stroke mobile may get lost in translation on HF? I did keep the Mobile in my call though, as I have found “Mobile” can get you dragged out Quagmire of callers on occasions.
I was so pleased that my 1st contact was with LA1SOTA, the Norway SOTA Club, the op was Knut today. 6 more contacts on 20m and 43 Chaser points in the log took me over 2500 points and closer to my third Sloth Award. one of my 10 point contact was Pat ZL1KS on holiday in Europe using a DL Prefix. would have made my day if I got him in his home Land on a 10 pointer I did not see many spots for uk , but that’s either WX or seasoned Activators are holding out for December and the winter bonus Season??
WX was pleasant sunny most of the time but windy, But Both Elaine and myself agreed it was a great trip and I was pleased with what I got from this location, so keep it in mind for doing it again.
Thanks to all the activators who go up for us and thanks to you the reader for taking time to read my Report.
Best 73,