Thanks to Storm Bert I had a Premier Inn cancellation from a rally in November 2024 that I could not get a refund on. Two choices, lose the booking or re-arrange. I re-rranged for this weekend.
As me and Mrs Vaz both had a weekend free, we decided to make use of the booking in Holyhead and on route did three hill activations.
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Great Orme - GW/NW-070
It was a windy activation. I decided on HF 7mhz. A few reports of my audio being a bit off but a strong signal. I put this down the comms masts. Managed 20 in the log before my fingers felt like ice. Decided time to pack up and head to the next hill.
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Mynydd Bodafon - GW/NW-071
More windy, but this time I had a little bit of shelter below the summit and again, I decided on 7mhz. I got setup, spotted and called CQ. This time I noticed my SWR was going quite high the band sounded a bit quiet.
I just happened to move the radio and signal/noise levels came up. Turned out to be a duff connection at the connector at the radio end.
With something wedged under the coax the signal improved and SWR was back to normal.
Made 28 contacts on 7mhz
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GW/NW-069 - Holyhead Mountain
The last of the three hills I planned on activating. This one I did on a mix of 10m and 2m
Had a good chat with chap who was interested in what I was doing - which was nice.
This time 9 contacts, 4 on 10m and 5 on 2m and one S2S with GW4TJC/P on GW/NW-001
Not sure this bench was on the hill when I last activated it
The sky was a bit black by the time I was done
Holyhead harbour
South Stack lighthouse
All in all a good time. The list of repairs is as follows:
HF RG58 coax needs fixing - new connector
10m RG174 needs fixing - new connector
2m RG58 coax needs fixing - new connector (the old one fell off…) 
Cheers
John
