November is normally the time the bike goes away for the winter, but today started with some blue sky and no rain. A fine change from the recent storms. Looked like a good day for some sota, the family were using the car so I loaded up the ST for a trip to East Lothian for a walk up Spartleton hill GM/SS-182. I had a look at the map and thought I had the route planned out, well there are lots of turns and wee roads through the country there. There was a flooded section and lots of wet leaves under the trees which made life interesting, then Bambi decided to race across the road but fortunately missed me. When I got to the start point and parked up at the start of the walk, the route was labelled “Herring road” and looked like a land rover track, sure enough a land rover drove up it later when I was getting ready to go home. It took about three-quarters of a hour to the top and the views across the Forth opened up at the top. Berwick law, Bass rock and the Isle of May on the horizon. The radio operation was different today, no 2m qso’s. I could hear M0DHY in the Lake district but he couldn’t hear me and neither could anyone else despite being able to see all the way to Arthur’s seat in Edinburgh, usually go
od for a few qso’s. HF was good but occasionally noisy, 17 qso’s including my first to Canada VE2CSI in Quebec on 12m. A run of 10 chasers on 20m after a spot then a few on 17m including a couple of s2s. After a couple of hours it started to get a bit cold and damp, time to go home. I took a different route home and avoided most of the wet leaves this time. Not a bad day out for November.
Andy
MM7MOX
