That is why my operation is 100% BNC. Even at home. Well, N connectors on the fixed antennas. But the whatever-to-BNC adaptors never come off the UHF connectors.
wunder
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OK, letās try again!
Sadly, it would appear to be around 10-15 degrees colder than Christmas Day. Flask of coffee made, and second fleece added. QRV in about 1 hour.
OK so Iām at the parking spot for SP-015 and realised Iāve left the FT-817 at home. So Iāll nip up and do a 2m HH activation, then nip home, get the radio, then activate another local summit later!
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Hi Tom,
It sounds to me like youāre not paying much attention, are you?
Or you are getting old?..just kidding.
Itās good that you seem to always have a backup plan.
Cheers,
Guru
Iām getting older every day Guru. Canāt seem to stop it!
As well as leaving the radio at home, Iād also left my walking poles at home. I donāt normally use them for summits like The Cloud G/SP-015 and Gun G/SP-013, but there are useful for raising the ends of the legs of the 80m dipole to at least 1m above the ground.
Using the VX7R FM handheld, I couldnāt get any answers to my CQ SOTA calls on 145.500MHz. However, there was a net in progress on 145.525MHz, as there often is in the mornings. I gatecrashed that and worked three stations. Fortunately, unlike last time, my handheld was charged up!
I returned home to collect the poles and radio bag, but noticed that the kitchen was a tip. I decided that it would be āgood formā to sort this out before Marianne got up out of bed, so I delayed going out again until after I had washed all the pots!
Originally, Richard G3CWI had declined my joint activation invitation due to my early start. But with me unexpectedly being back in Macc, I sent him a message to update and inviting him to Gun. It was 9am, and Richard was now interested. This was good because he also had the information that there were tropo conditions on 2m. This meant that the 80m plan was deferred yet again, as 2m SSB was now the focus.
We parked at the usual spot and walked up the boggy, partly frozen track to the summit. At the summit, up went the battered, bruised, used and abused SOTAbeams SB5 antenna. It might be showing evidence of wear and tear, but it still works!
I operated on 2m SSB and made 14 QSOs. Conditions were good, particularly to the south, and signals from France, Guernsey, Cornwall, Devon and Surrey were all particularly strong. Locators worked were: IN78, IN88, IN89, IN98, IO70, IO73, IO81, IO82, IO83, IO91. Additionally, using the VX7R handheld, I worked Simon GW4TJC/P S2S on Y Lliwedd GW/NW-008 plus one other station.
After a pint at the Harrington Arms, Gawsworth, it was back home to the family, then a drive up into Derbyshire to watch the sunset from the top of Eccles Pike (a HuMP) and some pub grub. A rather nice day in all respects.
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Yes and with age comes responsibility. Which is why I switched my company laptop on to see how many emails I had since I downed tools on 22/12/2016. Six days absence and a weekend and only 42 emails to read. Someone needs to get my non-UK colleagues to understand that most of the UK shuts from 23rd Dec to 2nd Jan or 3rd Jan in Scotland. We get 2 days holiday for New Yearā¦ New Yearās Day and the next day. It takes that long for us to metabolise the excess alcohol consumed over Hogmany 
No signs of ice or tropo today but I feel I may need to take my small 2m PA up a hill tomorrow partly for tropo fun and partly to get some completes from G4OIG.
I guessing over half of those were CCed to you with no action needed (but you have to read them to find that) - at my last real job 30-40 emails a day were normal and often 90% went into the trash! Never ever, ever, reply to an email while you are on vacation, otherwise the flood gates open as people realise you are checking your business emails! Often a good proportion of the mails are for actions no longer needed if you leave reading them until you return to work.
This āalways availableā attitude that we have nowadays is damaging to our health - better to go out in -30Ā°C to activate a summit, than open business emails while you are on holiday - itās āhealthierā!
Ed.
Well I have just alerted for 80m - but a look at the tropo forecast and Iāve changed my mind. 80m will have to wait again! 2m it will be, and will try to do justice to 3 modes today - SSB, FM and CW.
Regarding work emails, I am doing a bit of work currently at a place where the managers tell you just before a holiday period to NOT log-in to your work email and concentrate on getting some rest. It is so unusual that Iām not fully convinced that they actually mean it! 
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