Hi Phil, I agree with you on having a range of interests outside of SOTA and amateur radio especially on retirement. [I was warned many men go off the rails when they lose their sense of purpose gained from their careers – Not me!]
That’s where we differ a bit: you seem more competitive, more ‘SOTA points’ orientated, “Done that, got the tee shirt” so to speak.
I’m happy to re-walk and re-activate many summits every year or more often. It helps that I don’t have to drive far to many lovely G/LD, G/NP and G/SP summits. Same with the Wainwrights on the Air (WOTA) programme: I’ll probably never activate them all but may have great pleasure doing the nice ones many times.
I have discovered this aspect to activating. I like being the DX, so I now activate Scald Law GM/SS-125 as it is local and a decent 45mins exercise again and again. And chasers still chase me. New summits are nice but they’re all getting some distance from home now. There’s plenty of summits I’ve activated once to do again. And plenty to never go near again! YMMV.
As I don’t have a home station, SOTA activations are a way for me to get on air. I’m not really after points these days so much, although I would like to reach 2xMG in the long term.
I’m happy to do the same summits again and again, it’s always different because I often use a different radio depending upon my goals for that day, for example chasing a specific activator.
It was a bit weird to actually find someone who knew about SOTA on a summit, even more so when you’ve met that person a few weeks earlier at the hallowed grounds of the luxurious Norbreck Castle hotel (& Spa - well its got an empty fountain out front).
You’ll get your mojo back Colin, always good to step away for a while rather than forcing it.
Perhaps we should have a mountain topper day. I could join in and help to lower the quality of CW
Thanks for that info Richard. I did a few tests from the EU site thinking maybe just batteries that was the problem but I couldn’t find anything they’d ship from the EU warehouse. HK warehouse seems fine, dangerous goods shipping prices excepted!
It’s not SOTA that’s the issue, I have an appetite for that, it’s just other everyday stuff.
Anyway, had a better couple of days, I got into the shack and I’ve rebuilt my Hill Top 20 yet another time, it’s a rig that I’ve been struggling with for a while. The Hill Top 20 is a prototype of the later 4SQRP Hilltopper rigs. I’ve tried many different things to improve the receiver on my rig. I’ve swapped the ICs, tried different ICs, changed the op amp gain set resistors, etc etc. This time I’ve put a few things back to the schematic values and put in a brand new RF attenuator pot (AF gain is fixed, level varied by attenuating incoming RF signal).
Yesterday I swapped some capacitors on my home brew SST to try to widen the crystal IF filter a bit, it was a bit difficult to get access but I didn’t want to remove the lower half of the case in order to protect all of the off-board wiring. I managed to swap the four capacitors with a bit of patience.
I also went inside my QRPme Micro 20 and swapped the headphone jack, so now the audio is in both ears instead of just one! I made up the name Micro 20, as the rig was meant to be a four band rig based on Oleg Borodin’s Micro 80. The “QRPme US/RU Micro 80/4” didn’t work due to cross talk in the wiring to the switch that switched the 4 crystals. Adding a bank of relays kind of spoilt the idea, didn’t work and increased the cost significantly. I re-used the relays in my BITX20 SSB rig. The Micro 80/4 never made it as a general release kit. Last year I decided that it was a shame to have a broken rig sat on the shelf for so many years, so I put together a single band version for 20m by cutting out all of the additional band stuff. I’ve ended up with a Pixie type rig putting out about 250-300mW. The AF transistors are Russian, they’re green!
An MTR activity day would be interesting, I think there’s been something similar in the past, but I don’t think it was SOTA based. I seem to recall that the activity was for ATS rigs too. I guess it would take a small bit of organising like the rest of SOTA activity days - name a date and put a post on the SOTA reflector! (And hope that some folk join in.)
This was how it looked after my colleague used his ice axe to pull out the damaged wing so he could drive the car. That was 2010 or so and cost his insurance company about £2500 to repair.
