With the excellent weather this afternoon I couldn’t resist going on an evening activation i.e playing radio on a near by summit. After hearing plenty of good activation’s taking place this morning, I thought I would share a few images of the inversion layer which developed and collapsed over the duration and the awesome sun set over Snowdonia which ended the activation.
The walk up was fairly quick, compared to a year ago where I was taking my PicASTAR up along side seemed all too easy. I set up on the burial mound this time as its much flatter and it offered a slightly wider view of the surrounding hills. I didn’t see a soul today which for this hill I found rather odd seen as its popular with walkers.
First band to work was 40m as per usual to try and catch the last of the inter G opening before the skip lengthened. The newly constructed 40/17m 5/8L vertical was on its second activation and proving a much better antenna for setting up on “peaky” summits. A run with 20 or so stations finished 40m SSB, a few presses of the band select and connecting the matching stub into the tee-piece brought me onto 17m.
The antenna loads perfectly after much trimming on 17m, The band seemed active but not many stations where worked at this time which seemed odd. I switched to 15m using my dual band 1/4L Vert to catch some US chasers before the band closed, which proved to be successful bagging 12 or so NA chasers including a s2s with VE2DDZ who was a perfect copy on his KX3 <=> KX3 QSO. A few G stations including Phil G4OBK with a good signal made it into the log.
After 15m had faded out, I went back to 17m. The band had opened slightly more, but by this time the sun was setting so I opted to watch it instead for a while. With the headphones on listening to a NA station the band seemed to change instantaneously as the sun dropped. A South Africa station beaming NA was heard as well as Japan plus lots of other interesting DX. My 12W wasn’t going to cut through against the big stations in NA; so I worked what I could and managed a few West coast stations and a VE5 on 17 which was great.
This all makes such a change back from a couple of months ago, where a good run on 40m before the situation became unbearable on the summit which consequently ended the activation. Time to relax, sip the soup and take everything in that is good around you.
A great little hill - If your visiting Wales, Check out the Clwydian Range.
Jonathan - GW2HFR
