A quick note to apologise to any chasers who were looking for me on 40m last night. Normanby Top TW-005 is the highest point in N/E Lincs, by the time I had managed to extract myself from the last client of the day, parked the car, found the farmer and gained permission to cross his land to the trig point, 40m was pretty unusable. I tried a few calls on 7-080 without success and QSY’d to 80m. This activation needed to be quick as to the South of me Storm clouds were approaching fast with the associated lightning. I am sure you all understand – 10m carbon pole, 80m dipole, thunder and lightning, highest point for at least 60 miles in any direction = not good for ones health. I think this was the fastest aerial erection, work a handful of stations and collapse the antenna in the history of mankind. The Farmer was in the stack yard as I ran past him to the car with the rain chasing me across the field, laughing, err, lots!! Sorry to the chasers looking for TW-005, I have more work to do in the area next month and can hopefully redeem myself then. Thanks to the stations I worked in turbo mode.
Incidentally, there is NO public access to the trig point, it is on private land. Northern charm worked for me to gain access. The farmer did comment that he has had to “chuck several people off his land who were armed with bags of electronics”. He is a reasonable guy, and said if any SOTA activators wanted to introduce themselves prior to entering his property he would grant access as long as there was no shooting party scheduled for the same day.
Acre house farm is located adjacent to the radio mast marked as disused on the OS map, and is situated on the Viking way near to the summit of Normanby Wold.
Fullstory on the G4YTD website in the next few days.
73’s
Tim