I checked and rechecked the weather at the start of the week and Friday was looking good, so booked a day off work and decided to head to Shining Tor (G/SP-004). Having done a solo activation the previous weekend, it was good to get my usual SOTA buddy John @M7RTB out to get the double-act back up and running. John wasnt operating today, but was my chief tech support and call sign decipherer - more on that later.
Parked in the layby/pull-in between the Cafe and the Cat & Fiddle and set off up the track. John was testing the APRS out on his newly acquired FT5D, so we were surprised to hear Andy @M1CJE from G/WB-004 Titterstone Clee Hill - nice to make the contact, but as we werenāt quite in the AZ, no S2S offered or claimedā¦
Onwards towards the summit, sunk in a few boggy places but otherwise got to the top unscathed. Listening in to Andy it was clear there was quite a bit of activity on 2m, so up with the Slim-g and FT70 - 9 2m contacts in quick succession, including Tom @M1EYP/P on the Cloud celebrating his 4,000th activation, great to be part of your celebration Tom!
Today was a struggle as I was activating as M7MWZ and not MW7MWZ, which I found very difficult to day for some reason!
Also a sincere thanks to John @G0MHF who had seen my post in the GW SOTA group with my planned activation and messaged to say he was thinking about Shining Tor too, but politely decided not to, so as not to cramp my style - John you are a gent 
Back to the main point of this activation, to break my HF activation duck. Down with the Slim-G, and out with the Xiegu G90 and a 41ā random wire/9:1 unun/17ā counterpoise set-up.
Put a spot on SOTAwatch on 40m and called CQ - welcome to the world of pileups! How do you guys manage these?! My brain was frazzled trying to pick out call signs when many stations are speaking over each other. Great that John was on hand to help me through it capturing call signs and helpfully bringing up QRZ pages so I could try and see who I was talking to.
40m seemed ok into Europe, but wanted to try my luck on 20m. Quick spot on SOTAwatch and called CQ. Nothing, not even a crackly signal. A minute head scratching and figured out that the G90 (or more probably me) hadnt changed it from LSB to USB - a few button presses andā¦ PILEUP! This is hard workā¦ 
Cue John laughing at my lack of pileup skills, but managed to get a load more in the log, including 2 S2S with Uwe @DK8OA and Chris @DL1CR who were on DM/NS-122. Managed a few contacts into the States, which feels like a good result with the G90 and 20w.
Many thanks to all for your patience with me trying to deal with the pileups, and apologies to those I must have missed - I am hoping I get better with practice! If anyone has any top tips, let me know.
Mike
M(not W)7MWZ