With the usual holiday time around Christmas I decided to make a come back to SOTA. My activating activities started to fade around 2020, when I found much joy in building HF Yagi’s and more recently phased arrays for the low HF bands. In 2022 I also moved QTH back to North Wales, where the fun really started with radio and a lot less sleep…
Back to SOTA. Unfortunately it was left on a bit of a cliff hanger with near 900 ish activator points. Possibly with a good couple of months the MG could have been achieved 5 years ago or more. The KX3 has been paired with a new LiFepo4 battery and I am back out there. Early next year MG is looking promising. Steady progress
My CW practice is improving, first QSO in 2026 is looking more likely. Morse Mania is a great help with this journey. Funny moment tonight trying to whistle my callsign to M1GEO, I couldn’t help but laugh !
Fairly typical run on 40m followed by 60m with many familiar voices back in the log. The ascent is very straight forward from a near by farm track. Highly recommended if you haven’t been under a wind turbine before now ! Note I positioned carefully between the cow waste 
The following day the weather was excellent, be it rather cold. I decided on Arenig Fach. Charmaine and myself had a day climbing up Arenig Fawr in the summer ( with no radio sadly ). The summit has a particuarly difficult ascent with most of its path concealed by dense vegetation.
Arenig Fawr in the background.
A bit of dash tonight, no external PA resulting in a 15W activation when the extra power would have been a great help. George M1GEO managed the contact on 80m as well as ON3WAB. Roger MW0IDX got the contact on 20m across North Wales. I knew I was pushing my luck with the short skip propagation on HF, but that part of fun for me.
I will update the report topic as the 1000 point mark approaches.
73, Jonathan GW2HFR/P
