It might be different!
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Excellent! Arthur’s Seat is difficult just because of getting permission, otherwise it’s easy.
When I tried the other week I was late for my alert and didn’t post a spot. You will have better luck.
There are several chasers around, the most prolific being Ken (GM0AXY) and Christine, and he’s already checked in here. I can also be around at the time.
If you like I can plan a trip to another summit near me and we can try a summit to summit. I need to do one more in the Pentlands anyway.
Also worth noting there’s a very active repeater network up here and it may be worth calling out on those for people to move to simplex.
I would love to do a summit to summit. I should finish my business Thursday or Friday midday in Edinburgh. I’m not familiar with the various mountain ranges but I had considered trying to get permission for Arthur’s Seat just because it is within walking distance of the hotel.
We have not finalized plans and I am trying to be flexible because she wants to see so much. I think we leave Edinburgh Friday to head north or maybe first to Fife I think its called as she heard good things about that area. But at least once on Saturday or Sunday I will operate and maybe one each day. I would like to bag Ben Lawers as it looks like a scenic hike and of good height.
Get permission anyways even if you don’t do it. It’s one email 
Actually… obviously I’ve not done Arthur’s Seat yet. Maybe I can tag along for that one?
I will be mobile that weekend back and forth to Glasgow so will check the times and even fit a radio in the car just in case.
I activated Ben Lawers and her four pals several years ago on a Thursday and managed to get more than enough contacts for each summit. Here is the link to the report. Activation of The Lawers Quad
Obviously to manage this route you need to get dropped off and picked up at the end. But you could manage to do the four summits in two trips.
Looking towards Ben Lawers from Meall Greigh summit
Looking back along ridge from Ben Lawers.
Anyhoo, best of luck and hope for your success - and the wx is kind.
73 Neil
Sure thing. I will contact you when arrangements are finalized. For Arthur’s Seat it probably needs to be Wednesday or Thursday evening or Friday am, which I’m not sure how many people are on the radio then.
Yes. Once you have a reply, find a clear frequency and hopefully you will get a number of callers. Often someone will spot you or you can self spot and then keep calling CQ SOTA on that frequency. You can also pop back to 500 and call something like “CQ SOTA listening on 450”.
73 Richard
PS. I’m glad you’ve noticed our 2m allocation is half of yours!
Arthur’s Seat was an easy qualification just on the 2m handheld s couple of weeks ago. I’m wondering if permission is really required for such operation? Several people on summit were operating a handheld transmitting device and I’m certain none had secured permission to do so.
If you think the law doesn’t apply to you then you can just ignore it. It’s how huge tranches of the world’s population operates.
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As the hill, surrounding park and roads are Crown property it is required to obtain permission for certain activities. Not obtaining the correct permission could well have the activators log for the summit being removed from the database.
This was mentioned in a recent thread about vehicles driving up summits without permission.
Just because Scotland has a good “wandering” law it should not be flouted.
England and many others associations have summits that you need permission to access or its a no go! Why should it be different in Scotland.
So is there a sign at Holyrood Park saying you need permission to operate radio equipment? I cannot find any reference to any restrictions on the website or through Google.
I must admit I couldn’t find anything either to confirm it was needed. Just on here.
Is there a specific licence provision here?
Does there have to be a sign? Ailsa Craig doesn’t have a sign but if you want to venture past the rocky shoreline then permission is required from The Marquis of Ailsa. The boatmen from Girvan have the permission that is why you get to land on the island.
The Historic Environment Scotland website is very welcoming to Holyrood Park so clearly access is allowed. I would have expected something to tell me that I couldn’t use a two-way radio. There is an assumption that radio equipment is allowed on other Scottish summits so why is Arthur’s Seat different?
Thanks y’all from Texas for the insights.
I’m not positive I can fit Arthur’s Seat in but will email for permission as I hope to bag that hill. As a guest I don’t want to take any chances.
I read the trip report of the quad activation around Ben Lawyers and that looks appealing. Nice trip and report. But I am traveling with my wife and I know she would not be happy with that much hiking.
So I am thinking of Satuday for Ben Lawyers and other sightseeing and Sunday potentially for something easy like Glas Maol in eastern Scotland. We are staying in Pitllochry so that appears to be a good central location.
I look forward to making contacts with you. I’m going to have to look up what all these unique geographic terms mean. I have learned in preparing for this trip that Edinburgh is not pronounced the way it looks.
Most Scots pronounce Edinburgh like “Ed-in-buh-ruh”, but more local and not the posher tongued ones say “Edinbruh”
Walkhighlands website gives a lot of pronunciations for the Scottish summits as well as a lot of info.
The regulations used to be fetchable from the Holyrood Park website but it does seem to have done a “Lord Lucan” and disappeared. That doesn’t mean the law (it’s a by law) has been repealed. It’s a classic case of ignorance is no excuse of the law, although the inability to find the regulations prohibiting you do something is pretty good at making this a Catch 22… you find out you can’t do something when you get stopped for doing it.
So back to the issue here… Holyrood Park is not a park in the normal sense of a park in a city. It’s Crown Property, or put simply, the Queen’s back garden to her home in Edinburgh. It just so happens the Crown is happy for you to wander about lots of this private property and enjoy yourself. You can’t do the same at Sandringham, Balmoral or Buckingham Palace! There are (hidden) by-laws and among them is the one that says you cannot setup a radio station. If you ask (by email so it isn’t difficult) and say what you intend to do, permission normally comes back by return. If you say you want to rig a 100ft Versatower with 2x 5ele 20m monobanders then I guess they will say no. But a fishing rod away from the top (where all the tourists are) is not a big problem. As many people will tell you, it’s not hard to get permission.
When you get there and I’ve been many times, there is hardly any room by the trig point as there are so many visitors. It’s like the Tower of Babel as tourists finish taking photos and then phone home and say “Guess where I am” in a zillion languages. No, they don’t have written permission to use their 2 way radios (mobile phone). You don’t see the rangers rushing around handcuffing tourists for breaking the law so you could presume that using a handheld to bag 4 contacts are departing is OK. It may well be acceptable to the rangers but it’s still an offense and you could (but probably wont) be stopped.
What about a fishing rod away from the top? Again there are plenty of places in the AZ where it would not be a hazard to others. But that is likely to draw the attention of the rangers. I’ve never been there and not seen at least one ranger walking about. You could take a chance but as permission is easy to obtain why take the chance of being stopped.
The issue the MT want to avoid is when someone sets up an obvious station without permission and causes a hazard/problem then makes a fuss with the ranger when told to stop. That is the point when it all blows up and someone on the MT gets contacted by someone from Holyrood and we get told that this activity must stop and no more permission will be granted. It only needs one gobby activator and one jobsworth ranger and it is broken for all of us. Wont happen? Well I guess there wasn’t an item in the UK’s national radio mag about hilltop radio activities causing a nuisance last month!
So just email and get permission and don’t spoil access for everyone else.
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It’s probably in The Holyrood Park Regulations 1971 ( UK Statutory Instrument 1971 No. 593) but it’s not available online.
My quick Google-fu suggests that is the doc and as you say it’s not online.
By the way the words “So just email and get permission…” were not aimed at you particularly Richard but at anyone considering the summit!