Just a quick activation report and a thank you to all the chasers/S2Ss for the year.
At the beginning of 2022, I started my second year as a Ham, so I decided to set myself a personal challenge. After a bit of searching, I came up with the goal of 5K S2S points in a year. Living in the East Midlands, there are no summits close by, so I tend to travel over to the west of the Peak District a lot. A few people may have caught me on Shining Tor G/SP-004 
, which despite being my closest summit, is still an hour away.
At the beginning of last week I realised my goal was not too far away, so decided to go for one last push. Whilst driving across the Peaks the weather was awful. I was tempted to turn back but as I drove up to the Cat and Fiddle Pub, the clouds opened and there was Shining Tor, surrounded by cloud.
I had a great session getting 15 S2S contacts (60 points) but the bands were quite quiet, so I called it a day. The walk down was amazing.
The plan was to try and finish my quest on Saturday, so I arrived early. The weather was dry but cloudy and freezing cold. With some the 10-15m bands opening up recently, I have been using my Xiegu G90 with a Super Antenna. This combination works really well and gives me a lot of flexibility (Thanks Mark M0NOM for the tip). I use a handheld with a Slim G for 2m. S2Ss were coming pretty regularly, so I began to think it was in the bag! Whilst I was getting a lot of QSOs, most of the S2Ss were low scores. In 4 hours I got 31 S2Ss with 109 points, I was just 14 points short of my target, but suddenly the Spots seemed to dry up… After a long wait, with the temperatures plummeting, reluctantly I decided to call it a day.
Looking at the weather for the next day I was gutted to see that wall to wall snow, was forecast! Getting up this morning, things looked a bit better. The forecast was now only for mist and fog! I quickly got my kit together and drove over. At the Cat and Fiddle Pub (where I park) It was blowing a gale and pouring with rain! Plan B… Back in the car I drove to Gun Hill G/SP-013.
The weather here was much brighter and dry! With my first two QSOs I got to two 10 point S2Ss. Goal reached! ‘Jobs a Good Un’ as they say in Derbyshire. In total I got 50 QSOs with 10 S2S.
That’s me done for 2022! I am away now for the rest of the year, so feel free to visit! I will miss the jokes about where I am, thanks Rob and Ben! However I think the best joke came yesterday when Andy GW6PJZ asked me ‘How much Council Tax do I have to pay for living on Shining Tor!?’ It has been a great year and the ‘All Time UK S2S Roll of Honour’ is getting interesting! Thanks John, Tom and Allan, you have all given me targets to go for (even if you didn’t know it)! Here’s to 2023!
