I could barely believe it, but it turned out that as of the morning of Thursday 17th July 2014, Jimmy M0HGY had not yet harvested the 2014 activator points from Shining Tor G/SP-004. Shockingly, he hadn’t been up there since the dark days of 2013. Time to put that right!
We had a few errands to run in town first, the highlights of these being a freshly baked Spearing’s meat & potato pie (aka a “Macclesfield Breakfast”) and a quick call into Richard G3CWI at SOTAbeams, now in a town centre industrial unit.
It was hot and sunny for the walk up to Shining Tor summit, and worryingly, not at all windy, not even when approaching the top. This problem manifested itself in the form of incessant midge bother during the activation. At least I managed to keep them out of my Baxters Cock-a-leekie soup.
Jimmy was just using his VX-110 handie with rubber duck today, but still made 9 contacts on 2m FM including S2S with John GW4TQE/P on Moel y Gamelin GW/NW-042. He added three further S2S to his tally by sitting in on my gear and working Jack GW4COX/P and Allan GW4VPX/P on Mynydd Carningli GW/MW-033, then Bartek SQ9OJN/P on Wiezyca SP/PO-001.
My 32 QSO total for the activation included the same four S2S as Jimmy had worked, plus 22 more on 20m CW, and a couple more on each of 20m SSB and 2m FM. As we approached 1pm local though, the midges were convincing us that we needed to be in the Cat & Fiddle, and not on Shining Tor summit. And so we made a beeline for that famous hostelry, sitting on the saddle between Shining Tor and Axe Edge. A pint of Hartleys Cumbrian Way never tasted so good.
Back home, and back to final preparations for YOTA UK on Saturday.
Tom M1EYP