I love this fell. It isn’t as dramatic as some, but has a wonderful charm to it. The initial walk in from Yew Tree Tarn next to the A593 and through the woods is a little unusual for the Lake District, and welcome. I setup on a summit just on from the main one towards Conison Water.
Holme Fell
Yew Tree Tarn looking a little lacking in water!
It was a hot on the ascent (don’t say that very often!) and it is fairly sharp but not very long. Probably about 30 minutes maximum from parking next to Yew Tree Tarn to being on the summit. There are two summits, the Westerly one being the ‘official’ SOTA summit and Wainwright.
Today I literally grabbed my rucksack from yesterday’s Pike of Blisco activation, removing the Arrow Alasaka antenna, Jet Boil and other ‘long time on summit’ gear and adding a couple of 4 cell 4200 maH LifePo4s so I could use the MiniPA50 this time out!
Pouncing on 20m initially for a few S2S it was great to get Zoli @HA5CQZ on HA/EM-111, Leszek @SQ9MDF on SP/BZ-070 and S09TA/P on SP/BZ-065 and sometime later
SP6F/P on SP/SZ-011 & Stefan @HB9HCS/P on HB/BE-115. Shortest DX was M6AGC/P groundwave from Thornton-Cleveleys. 20m was working well with low noise and low QSB.
A couple of calls on 17m CW landed a nice QSO with RZ6HSF who I don’t think was chasing SOTA, and YO8AZQ.
40m was pretty poor yesterday, today not great either and I didn’t hang on too long calling CQ. Whilst enjoying the weather, views and nature I moved back to 20m and slowly scanned the band. This is when I happened across Sam BD7MHZ (cool callsign) calling CQ around 51 with me. ‘BD’ I thought - don’t recognise that as a DX entity. To my surprise he could hear me and we had a brief chat after exchanging signal reports. Very made up with my first China contact, even better from a SOTA summit!
Very happy with the DX
DX with BD7MHZ
Had a lovely 58 chat with Angelo on Sardina IS0FDW on 20m before moving to 40m to get a S2S with Michael @DB7MM/P on DM/BW-365. Using a telescopic whip on the FT-817 BNC connector I had a nice chat with M0XZL (‘ex New Zealand’) just on the other side of the M6, then a few chaser contacts with my final QSO of the day S2S on 2m with G6WBS/P on GW/NW-003.
Coniston Water
Langdales
Old Man of Coniston and Weatherlam
Official Summit
Flora and Fauna
Flora and Fauna
A lovely day for SOTA and DX in the Lake District
All photos here.
