Hi all,
Looking for my last GW/MW, any one on GW/MW-037 ?
73, Éric F5JKK
Would that make it a “SOTA STAG DO”?
As they say - ‘Build it and they will come’
I think one reason that the Hog Roast day works so well (apart from being well organised) is that the location has the perfect mix of summits in the surrounding area. There is a good selection of easy (almost drive on ) summits to ones with significant hikes which obviously attracts a range of activator style. If there was a location similar to that in Scotland it could work just as well.
At about 3 hours drive from Wigan to Edinburgh, I would even consider making the trip up having never activated in Scotland at all, but would need one of the easier summits to drag all the gear up 
Ian
3 Likes
You can have Cairnpapple Hill GM/SS-254 then.
1 Like
Many thanks Ben and everyone that helped make this event happen. A lot of hard work goes into this and your efforts are much appreciated. After my recent health issues I really needed to get out up a hill, indeed any hill, and also meet up with some fellow activators. The day certainly did not disappoint.
Many thanks to Paul G6GGP (G4MD) for driving to the hill and hog roast venue. Driving the 82 miles unaccompanied from Northampton to Paul’s QTH was enough for me for now. I have driven 270 miles down to Cornwall, but not alone. Getting some solo miles under my belt outside of my locality is another stage in my recovery ticked off.
Paul gathering a few bits together before we pack up. Note the low antenna height due to the strong wind.
Paul and myself were fortunate with the weather on MW-030 and it remained dry throughout our activation. From our vantage point we could stand and watch the weather pass us by. I had intended to use my KX3 on 2m and HF, but it was out of the backpack for only a short period before I packed it away, finding the little Standard C710 handheld sufficient to make a reasonable amount of contacts with the 5 element beam. Much better than having to scramble everything away had we been rained on. Apologies to anyone looking for me on 2m SSB which I didn’t get to do. HF was poor anyway, so nothing lost there. On the plus side, my first two contacts were S2S on 23cm with Dave MW0JKS and Peter MW0PJE. Not bad for 380mW to a tri-band whip. Maybe I should have packed the quadruple quad.
Dark clouds passing us by.
In previous years I have been unable to attend the Hog Roast due to other commitments, but this time I got my stake in early. Hopefully there will be future events to book into my diary as I really enjoyed meeting SOTA friends, both old and new.
73, Gerald G8CXK (G4OIG)
13 Likes
I might be doing that one on next Sunday or Monday. I’ll put an alert up if I do
1 Like
I’d certainly be up for a GM SOTA Venison Roast Event as this would potentially give me and my dad Tom @M1EYP a great opportunity to bag some more GM SOTA uniques as well as meeting up with some GM SOTA activators and chasers as well. That’s providing though that my dad doesn’t get a gig that’s too good to turn down.
Jimmy M0HGY
2 Likes
Nice one Denis probably on 20m 
73, Éric F5JKK
I heard you working @M0XPO which was a decent contact from where you were. I tried as well but he couldn’t hear me replying to him.
1 Like
Thanks for the S2S on 23cm. I knew Dave was out with 23cm but didn’t know you were as well so it was a nice surprise.
I couldn’t hear you initially but once I added the linear (with pre-amp) and held the mast as high as I could without everything blowing down you were perfectly clear. If you only had 380mW that explains the challenge.
What transmitter were you using? Alinco DJ-G7 on low power?
2 Likes
I would love to arrange a London / South East SOTA weekend, but there are only 14 summits, spread out over a rather large area, each worth just a single point each so I’m not sure it would be well attended or successful…
…although Crowborough always seems to get peoples attention, being splat in the middle of a town 
Thanks to Ben et. al. for organising a really good weekend, although I request improvements in the weather order for next year!
73’s
Dave
G7SAT
2 Likes
Gerald has a Standard C710.
2 Likes
I was pleased with that one , and a good signal strength both ways too. In fact we actually had 2 qsos due to the first one being being rudely interrupted by a 10 minute heavy rain shower - valid qso first time, but missing the pleasantries (and any waffle) due to throwing everything in the rucksack in a great hurry and curling up into a ball with the waterproofs over the top of me and the equipment.
It might be successful since it would almost guarantee vhf qualification on the summits. It might even be possible to do multiple summits in a day for those wanting to expand their unique counts. Another things something like it could do, is attract more people in the area to sota since mass activity on the bands (especially vhf/uhf) is hard to miss.
Ian
2 Likes
And improvements into Ben’s weather forecasting too 
I concur , another great event and managing to catchup with everyone after the activating is a massive bonus.
What impresses me, is that no matter what your activating/chasing frequency or style, everyone is made to feel welcome and can find common ground to chat about and put faces to callsigns.
Ian
7 Likes
A Standard C710 tri-band handheld. 1 watt on 2m and 70cm. Super little beast.
2 Likes
Based on the weather - although it was wet, not as wet as two years ago - we discussed whether next year’s GW SOTA Day should perhaps be held in EA…
73, Robert
4 Likes
A great day out, thanks Ben. OK I agree with the previous poster that you don’t have a career as a weather forecaster, but it didn’t detract (too much) from the day. The hills were alive with the sound of “CQ SOTA”. I think I only got 2 non-S2S contacts. A picture speaks a 1000 words so:
(There are a few not showing for some weird IT reason - so maybe the picture only speaks 900 words )
4 Likes
Great to see you Gerald (and everyone else of course)… but extra special to get the rare G2G S2S contact.
As you suggested… we now need to get Gerald @F6HBI for a G2G three way contact! 
73 Gerald
5 Likes
Hi all,
I would like to say a massive thank you to all who took part in Saturdays GW SOTA S2S party, whether you were activating, chasing from a location, or at home in ther shack listening out for us. As quite a few people have mentioned, the Welsh and bordering summits were very alive with the sound of ‘CQ SOTA’, it was hard to find a free frequency on 145-FM, which is great news when organising events like these
We then had the hog roast back at the field, just south of the town Llanfair Caereinion. I have done a head count, and at one stage we had 62 people in the marquees (because of the lovely wx), all smiling, having fun, talking about the great hobby and catching up!
After counting all the money raised in the raffle, and taking out the costs of the food and toilet for the day; we managed to raise £630, and this has just been transferred to the SOTA account, to help with the running costs throughout the year. I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who supported the raffle, and a well done to those who won a prize - we had some really good ones this year.
I have hosted this event now, for 4 years, and the numbers just keep growing, and the donations keep increasing. This does show that the SOTA scheme continues to attract new amateurs to take part, which is brilliant. Having shared this information with everyone, it doesn’t really give me an excuse not to host the 5th GW Mid-Wales SOTA event next year 
so I will be sending out a date soon for 2026 - keep your eyes peeled!
As for my activation, it had been one hell of a week, with a lot of things going on in my life. Friday night came, and at 11:30pm, after getting home and having tea, I decided to scrub ‘Cadair Berwen’, and activate a closer, smaller summit. I chose ‘Allt y Main’ GW/NW-059 with my little one, Lyra. It was just under a 2 mile walk to summit, which we throughly enjoyed, even though we had two pretty nasty showers. We reached the trig, and found a nice bench to perch on, and spent a couple of hours calling out on 145-FM only. I managed to work 42 stations in total, and 23 of those were S2S contacts - fantastic! Lyra used my club call-sign while on summit, MW0MWX/p, and qualified working 5 contacts in total happy days! We really enjoyed our time there, watching everyone around us get a soaking, while we just missed the showers passing by.
Congratulations go to @MW0KXN Kevin, who at last hit his Mountain Goat, gaining 1000 points from Carnedd Wen GW/MW-012 on the day, accompanied by his wife Liz, who has a lot of patience and @G4HQB Philip, who hit Mountain Goat number two, from Pegwn Mawr GW/MW-006. Well done both, what a great achievement!
It was a pleasure to have @G3WGV John attend this years event, and do a speech about the history of SOTA - you must be proud to see all these keen amateurs taking part. Thank you to @GW4VPX Allan for presenting the awards, @MW0IDX Roger for saying the vote of thanks, and to everyone who helped me set the stuff up, and also take it down - really appreciate it.
Finally, I’d just like to thank all those who play a big part in running SOTA, especially the MT team. A lot of hard work must go into this scheme, that’s proven by the results we all see! I’d love to know roughly how many people take part in the scheme nowadays.
Until next year - 73 all!
Ben
GW4BML
23 Likes
According to the Database:
35271 registered users
13078 registered activators
14965 registered chasers
There are also 177983 summits around the world, so there’s plenty of room for us all!
4 Likes
For the last complete year (2024-06-15->2025-06-15)
64226 Activations logged by 4117 different activators
790750 Chases logged by 5567 different chasers
8 Likes