I feel unprepared but at least I charged my 0.8Ah lipo and found my Morse key, which hasn’t been used for a month. My bag is half packed.
In just over an hour I’ll be at a presentation by Kenton Cool, a British mountaineer who summited Everest for the 17th time last month. The presentation is to celebrate the last 70 years of Everest expeditions.
Hoping to manage a few hours in bed overnight before heading off to the Lakes early tomorrow morning.
I’m at the brookside (a night earlier than planned). Had a slight panic I couldn’t get to the kirkstone pass inn car park, as Google marked the road closed much further south than the inn.
Have done a recce and you can get up ‘the stuggle’, so crisis averted. I was going to walk further into town, but the brookside is 100m from my digs and I was too hungry.
Snap. Sorry I was thinking of going there after Mrs PJZ finishes the park run at Fell Foot. Won’t stay long as I’m thinking of going to Holme Fell afterwards. I’ll find a band you’re not active on Andy!
Hi Kevin we’re a couple of miles away, but 3 G&Ts down so I won’t risk driving in! Dinner’s nearly ready (with more wine). Enjoy and hope to speak to you tomorrow and meet in the evening
This happens to my [ageing] 60/40/30/20 linked dipole - in the field - from time to time. The UltraLite wire breaks off right at the solder joint on one of the croc-clips used to make the links. I effect a temporary repair by using my teeth as wire strippers so I can stick the bare wire in the other croc-clip. I’m taking that linked dipole tomorrow, so fingers crossed.
I’ve had that happen. Ideally the rubber boot would support the wire better and reduce the flexing on the soldered joint which is why it fails - but it’s easily fixed with a soldering iron.
The one of the plastic clips broke as well previously and fixed this temporarily by using a piece of guy line - which has become the permanent solution…
Got the soldering iron out and all fixed now. Put a couple of layers of heat-shrink tubing to cover/hide my handy work as well as part of the metal clip itself. Let’s hope it’ll stay in place for a while.
Easy to stress relieve the connection with heat shrink.
Simple to connect and disconnect even when wearing gloves.
Don’t seem to corrode or rot even in Scottish weather.
I’ve been using them for years. A massive improvement over croc-clips, Lucar connectors etc.
FMF suggested resoldering all of them awhile ago on another thread - good if you can be bothered but I find it’s less time and effort to solder them back on as and when they break off. My temporary field solution (above) is good enough to continue the activation.
Stinking hot! I had really strong wind all day from the car park to the summit. Hazy and strong sun all day. I used a significant amount of factor 30 suncreme and decided long pants was the best option. Alan M(M)0VPM did likewise.
NP-018 car park said 23.5C and by the time I was down and into Kendal and Windermere the temp was saying 27.5C. Very unusual for us Northern Eskimos Special thanks to Paul fG4IPB for trying 70cms for his 1st QSO on the band in 34 years he reckons and Stuart G1ZAR for nipping up Shining Tor for a 23cms QSO. We were 55 each way on 23cms FM and scratchy just a bit more than workable on 2m
Andy, sorry we didn’t get to do a 23cm QSO. I think the problem is, we activators are all doing our own thing (quite right!) and I was all over the place band-wise switching between 2m FM and 60m/40m SSB & CW and back to 2m without much consulting of the spots list.
P.S. The temperature hit 30C on the drive home - that’s unnatural for Cumbria.
Having spent far too much time resoldering dipoles Dave, M0JKS and I have been using a ‘switched dipole’ for the last six months. With no issues up to now. We had to recalculate the element lengths because of the capasitance effect, but it seems to work well. This one covers 40/20/15.
What no rain or strong winds in northern England! What can we Brits talk or moan about?
Boy it was hot; too hot!
Great couple of days. I think Mrs PJZ has voted for a day sightseeing tomorrow so no more radio for me this weekend. Thank you to all the activators for the S2S and to those of you we met in the pub. Thank you to all the chasers too and finally thanks to Mark for coordinating the meet again. You’re all appreciated!
