Over the Easter period my XYL, Jenni and I, planned a trip to the south west to visit some relatives in Cornwall but decided it was too good an opportunity not to collect some SOTA summits at the same time. What follows is a brief account of our ‘Legs Eleven Expedition’—all the ones.
The outline of the trip was to travel from Sheffield to the Bristol/ Mendip area, where we would break the journey/ work summits in the area. Following that we planned to head for the South Coast picking up SOTA hills on the way to do some of the S.W. Coast path. ( Abbotsbury to Exmouth). Then wander down through Devon and Cornwall to try Watchcroft again. (We failed first time a few years ago–only two qso’s in 2 hours on VHF). Following this, on the return we planned to pick up what others we could including some in the Welsh Borders.
Our operating style/ mode is to only operate unique summits with VHF 2m only.(QRP–2.5w). Looking at the list of proposed summits we knew it would be a tall order.Our tactic to ensure success was to work from areas we thought would have plenty of activity to the quieter areas, alerting those on route to our plans. This worked amazingly well–despite some quiet spells we were successful from all summits attempted. The weather was fantastic throughout the ‘expedition’ and we were surprised at how many Summit to Summit exchanges we had. Only on a few summits did we have to use SSB as well as FM to complete the activation.
Equipment used was very simple; FT817 3.5ah batteries (2) and HB 4 element Yagi–mostly hand held but occasionally on a fishing pole, especially for summits with heavy tree cover.
Summits visited.
199 G/SC-003 (Beacon Batch) 1 19/Apr/2011
200 G/SC-010 (Dundry Down) 1 19/Apr/2011
201 G/SC-007 (Long Knoll) 1 20/Apr/2011
202 G/SC-008 (Win Green) 1 20/Apr/2011
203 G/SC-009 (Lewesdon Hill) 1 20/Apr/2011
204 G/SC-011 (Hardown Hill) 1 21/Apr/2011
205 G/SC-004 (Staple Hill) 1 22/Apr/2011
206 G/DC-005 (Christ Cross) 1 24/Apr/2011
207 G/DC-002 (Brown Willy) 1 24/Apr/2011
208 G/DC-003 (Kit Hill) 1 25/Apr/2011
209 G/DC-004 (Hensbarrow Beacon) 1 25/Apr/2011
210 G/DC-006 (Carnmenellis) 1 27/Apr/2011
211 G/DC-007 (Watch Croft) 1 27/Apr/2011
212 G/SC-002 (Wills Neck) 1 28/Apr/2011
213 G/WB-019 (May Hill) 1 28/Apr/2011
214 G/WB-021 (Ruardean Hill) 1 28/Apr/2011
215 G/WB-022 (Seager Hill) 1 29/Apr/2011
216 G/WB-024 (Aconbury Hill) 29/Apr/2011
Highlights of the trip were the weather–amazing, the number of S2S’s and the walk along the ‘Undercliff’ on the SW Coast path–like Tolkein’s Rivendell. Many thanks to all chasers/ activators who made our trip a success,
Gordon G0EWN