I hope this isn’t a Brexit SOTA sort of thing going on!! :-).
-Brad
WA6MM
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Dave GD3TQQ, Victor GD4ONL & I will try and battle the wx and activate all GD summits over next two days.
73
Nick GD4OOE
I heard Victor GD4ONL/P calling with a huge signal on 145.500MHz FM during my activation yesterday. Unfortunately, he couldn’t hear me reply, nor all the rest of the pile-up from here in the North West of England it seems, due to noise/breakthrough on whatever site he was on at the time.
Pity - that would have been a nice S2S and a decent contribution to my score in the contest. It was certainly the loudest I have ever heard GD come through here on 2m FM, and no doubt the reason that dozens of people from the Manchester area were trying to reply to Victor’s calls! Hope you got some of them in the end Victor.
Probably all the other TX junk on GD-001 caused desense problems which is a shame.
Anyway, the good news is that there seems to have been plenty of UK SOTA activity since it stopped raining on Saturday! I think we may have solved your puzzle Steve.
You got it in one Andy, the VX-5 was near to useless due to all the RF floating about on GD/GD-001 but I managed enough to qualify it.
73
Victor GI4ONL
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You didn’t hear half of Manchester calling you then Victor?
Obviously not, otherwise I would have called them!
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Yeah I know, I jest. It was obvious you couldn’t hear them. Thing is we don’t normally hear GD on 2m FM round here. It comes in on 2m SSB OK, but FM is a rarity. You were 59+++ fully quietening, and incredible signal, so there must have been some enhancement going on. And your CQ calls were being greeted by huge pile-ups going back to you, complete with everyone’s favourite pile-up behaviour of the tail-enders tail-ending the tail-enders.
A real pity then that you couldn’t hear any of that. I’ll have to ask Jimmy how he got on with 2m FM from that summit. He operated from near the trig point. I can’t remember if he was troubled with breakthrough but he would have been using an FT-817. ISTR that he did a bit of SSB later on with the beam horizontal. I also think that he took the beam in preference to his normally-preferred MFD to give himself more capacity to deal with any breakthrough issues.
Over to you Jimmy @M0HGY , what do you recall?
When I activated Snaefell GD/GD-001 3 years ago, I made a total of 14 QSOs, 12 on 2m FM and 2 on 2m SSB. I think I may have had a little bit of breakthrough, but I don’t remember being too bad that I could not hear people calling me. I did spend a lot of time wandering about the summit, so more QSOs may have been possible.
Jimmy M0HGY
Hi Adrian,
This might have been one location where APRS spotting may have worked ! If I drive over the Long Mynd my APRS packets sometimes reach the MB7UCC digipeater in Cheltenham so a APRS hand held on Ruardean may well have worked.
73’s
Steve
G6UYG
Hi Steve,
That’s an interesting thought; something else for me to explore 
73
Adrian
G4AZS
I can testify that the FT817 is many times better at coping with very strong local commercial PMR signals than modern multi-band (or even some single band) handhelds. Here is a comparison between a Yausu VX7-R handheld & FT817 on G/SP-017 Billinge Hill, a summit with a notorious reputation for swamping all but the best VHF receivers.
Thanks & 73,
Mark G0VOF
Hi Brian,
Despite my noise problems Top Band was not as noisy as usual that night & I could actually hear John very well on CW & good enough for a relaxed chat on SSB. I usually have a Web SDR running on Top Band just in case conditions are really poor, the theory being that the WebSDR will hear better than my own station will so if nothing else at least I can spot the activator. Last weekend that was not the case & I was very surprised to hear Roy G4SSH on CW & you on SSB with my own station better than through the WebSDR. I know it took several attempts for you to complete the exchange with John but you made it in the end 
Well done & thanks for persevering.
73, Mark G0VOF
Hi all,
Last year I gave a presentation to the RSGB convention entitled:
“Mountain Goats and Shack Sloths - Summits on the Air - A Programme for All”.
The healthy question time suggested the material went down well. Although it may be a case of preaching to the converted, perhaps someone should offer their thoughts this year. It is good to keep the profile up.
I plan to complete my G-NP activations next week with Ingleborough and Penyghent and that the solar flux exceeds 80!
One can live in hope!
Regards
David G0EVV
The SFI is currently a convenient 86 and will probably increase as three sunspot groups have rotated into view.
Brian
It seems the sun is shining today. Pity some of us have to work! Have a great day all of you.
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Plenty going on in EI and Gi in past week or so.
Worked 9 in last 7 days :-))
karl