Nightmare night on SW-027

Old Reflector
1

Hi All,

Apologies for the confusion in my alert for SW-027 last night. I got my XYL to post a cancellation when I became mired in nightmare traffic on the M4. No sooner had I done this than it magically cleared and I made excellent time to the hill. This, allied to driving up to Langton Court Farm and parking there with the permission of the occupants of the bungalow adjacent the farm led me to decide to give it a go. They also warned me of the lack of stiles and the fact that all gates would be locked (which they were)

The paths marked on the map are non-existent on the ground, so I just made my way more or less directly across the fields to the high ground. It would be interesting to use a GPS device here, I’m sure the terrain bears no resemblance to the OS map! The summit was certainly not where I expected it to be…

Found he trig point atop the “central massif” and quickly set up, having asked my XYL to spot me on 144.310. It was getting dark and an icy wind was blowing out of the North, this would have to be a quick one.

'BVE came back to me after a couple of calls, (thanks very much for the call and spot John) but gave me a poor signal report - only 3x1. It seems conditions were not good or I had an equipment problem, because ten minutes further calling produced nothing. In desperation and deepening gloom (in both senses!) I changed the beam to vertical and gave a call on 145.500. Mercifully, three contacts followed in fairly quick succession (heartfelt thanks to G4TRA, GW0GHF and 2E0TDI)and as soon as the fourth contact was in the bag I packed up and headed off down the hill in near darkness but with a bright full moon to guide me. The trip down was uneventful, and after reassuring the bungalow-dwellers that I was OK (they were getting concerned that it was dark and I had not returned, bless them) I made good time home to my much-needed tea!

Again apologies for the alert mix-up, and for the undeniably “smash and grab” activation.

Hopefully look forward to catching a few of you from SW-020 this evening!

73 de Paul G4MD

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In reply to G4MD:

For some of my Potential activations I have used the Sat Imagery on Google Maps to get a better idea of the lie of the land than that which I get from just a map.

Looking at Google Maps there appear to be some tracks or paths, but nothing very distinctive from Langton Court Farm area.

Stewart

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In reply to G0LGS:

Hi Stewart

I often use Google Earth to spy out the terrain in advance, but it still gives a “flat” view of the landscape, which often requires a bit of interpretation by comparison with the contoured OS map to make sense of it. In the case of this summit, I obviously got it wrong because I was convinced I was going to find something different to what I did!

Made sense of the route I’d taken when I got home and looked again at the Google Earth view, but it brings home to you that sometimes what seems, isn’t…

73 de Paul G4MD

PS I find Google Earth particularly useful for identifying potential parking spots. Unfortunately large tracts of the mountain areas of interest to us SOTA types are at very low resolution and thus useless :-((

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In reply to G4MD:

Hi Paul,

Oh that Memory Map data wasn’t so inexpensive! Even with the 1:50,000 National Parks data, the 3D views it generates are great. Maybe several Christmases and Birthdays later…

73, Gerald