I got up earlyish this morning, the last day of my leave, to get a few wee jobs done. Towards 09:30Z I got the urge to ‘do a hill’. I packed up the rucksack, made a few sarnies and printed out a map for Fair Snape Fell. I left home at about 10:15Z and navigated myself directly to the Foot Fell cottage. I set off up Parlick and quickly developed the old jelly leg syndrome. After a short stop and a couple of breaths I was under way again. I walked up to the top of the gorge area and then set off eastbound around the Parlick summit before following the wall on up toward the trig point. About 50 mins in total.
I set up my kit on 2m, took a couple of pictures for the record and then called CQ on 2m. I worked a few of the regulars including G0HRT (Rob) and G6ODU (Bob) before contacting GI4SNA, David from the homeland in Lisburn, N Ireland. After the initial pile up I changed mode to SSB for another half a dozen contacts. When it went quiet, I dropped the dipole and extended the telescopic legs for 4m. I added the croc clips to each end to completed the tuning before calling CQ on 70mHz FM. What happened next surprised me - a pile up of 10 QSOs on 4m led by Steve GW7AAV and including a very satisfying S2S with GX0OOO/P John on G/LD-014!! This using the Wouxun 4m handie with 5w out. I swopped back to 2m FM for a short time before intending to return to my car. I had a QSO with G1JCW (Tony) who expressed his grief at having missed me on 4m. After finishing another little pile up on 2m, and not wishing to disappoint, the dipole was lowered again for a quick call to Tony on 4m. This was followed by another 5 contacts before the battery went dead. A total of 16 contacts on 4m - very much to my surprise.
I packed up and then took 10 mins to admire the view. I could see from the LD thru Cumbria, Morcambe Bay, the Isle of Man, Blackpool, thru the Wirral to the mountains of North Wales. What a beautiful day and a lovely walk. It was just getting a little chilly after having spent nearly 3 hours on the top so I started the descent. I stopped again to watch the paragliders on Parlick before making my way back to the car.
If you haven’t ‘done’ G/SP-007, please may I recommend it to you.
Thanks to all who called in.
Much appreciated
Dave
M0TUB