I was lucky to get the chance to go to the Lake District two Fridays in a row. Amazingly each day had a good weather forecast - fine but with fairly strong winds.
Friday 2024-09-27 Pike Of Blisco G/LD-024
I arrived at the Old Dungeon Ghyll car park at about 10am. It’s a small car park but free for National Trust members. I was hoping there would be space - I would hope so on a weekday outside school holidays. There were a few spaces left but I think it probably filled up quite soon after I arrived. There is another NT car park at Stickly Ghyll that adds another kilometre or so each way so I knew I could always go back there.
Obligatory Herdy photo
The route is straightforward. Follow the road to the camp site and then the footpath goes steeply up. This isn’t as bad as it used to be as there is now a proper path that zig zags up. It comes out at the cattle grid at the top of the road over to Little Langdale. I crossed the road and followed the right hand path. This goes through lots of bracken and eventually joins the main path up from the road. Just follow this all the way to the top.
The Langdale Pikes. These are not SOTA summits but somewhere behind them is High Raise G/LD-019
Pike of Blisco has two summits and I think the second one is higher, but it doesn’t matter as both are in the activation zone. I found a spot just down that gave me reasonable shelter from the wind. I’m not usually too worried about wind as I have a tarp that gives good shelter but I think I would have struggled to find a large enough area of grass to pitch it. The spot I chose had somewhere I could push the pole into so I didn’t have to worry about where to push the guy pegs into. When I got onto 10m and 15m it wasn’t so good for the radials so I had to improvise a bit.
I had a reasonable run on 30m using my EFHW including one S2S thanks to the ever reliable Bruno @HB9CBR followed by a few on 20m. I then set up my antenna for 2m FM only to find the battery on my handheld was flat - I hadn’t bothered charging the battery as I had hardly used it on the previous activation. It was flat because I’d left it on. I shall try not to make that mistake again!
I then set up the groundplane for 10m and 15m. 10m was hopeless - no spots from RBN and a self spot didn’t bring any contacts. I changed the link for 15m and got a couple including @W4GO. I was very disappointed at how poor 10m still is for me despite all the good reports on the reflector.
I think High Raise G/LD-019 is just visible in the distance this time.
I descended towards Red Tarn turning right towards Oxendale. From here it’s only a couple of km back to the car but seems a lot further!
I think that might be Old Man of Coniston GLD-013 on the left and Black Combe G/LD-030 on the right in the distance
Another Herdy shot
Friday 2024-10-04 Old Man of Coniston G/LD-013
I parked at the Walna Scar Road car park which is up a steep road from Coniston village. Parking here is £6 for 4 hours or £8.50 for 24 hours. 4 hours would be enough to do up and down the Old Man but not for a SOTA activation so I had to pay the £8.50. The machine accepted Google Pay on my phone so it was easy. It’s expensive but I don’t often have to pay to park for SOTA as most routes start from laybys or free car parks. Paying a couple of times a year doesn’t seem too bad. Parking here shortens the route and avoids a steep climb and isn’t actually much more than parking in the village.
Cloud was down at the start
I followed the main tourist track up via Low Water that goes through some of the old slate quarry workings. On this path I met a group of people with shovels. They were clearing out the gullies on the footpath. Apparently they have to do this every couple of months.
Low Water
Low Water and the path up from the summit
I reached the summit quicker than I expected and now had to find a spot out of the wind. One side is very steep and one is very gentle. Unfortunately the wind was southerly and coming up the gentle side. It wasn’t possible to shelter safely on the steep side so I had to set up the tarp. It wasn’t hard to find a reasonably flat grassy area where the pegs would go in so setting up the tarp and guying the pole was straightforward and gave good shelter. Despite this and all my layers it was quite chilly from the southerly wind. Last week’s had been from the north but this felt colder. The cloud was just down on the top most of the time and this is probably what made it feel cold.
As usual I started on 30m and had a reasonable pile up. There were lots of very strong signals. After working a couple of stations I couldn’t make out anything but realised there was a /P at the end of a call. I sent /P? and back came Colin @M1BUU/P on Whernside G/NP-004. The good run continued for a while. I was relieved because there was a forecast for a geomagnetic storm so I was glad to get 4 in the bank. I switched to 20m for a couple more S2S and worked a few more chasers too.
I switched to 2m FM. This time I had charged the handheld and I got 3 QSOs which is still far fewer than I used to get on this band. One was @2E0JWA/P who was climbing the Old Man. I thought he might make it to the top before I left but I never saw him.
Then it was the multiband GP. I got 4 QSOs on 10m including 2 US and on 15m there were 10 QSOs with 3 US with the furthest being @K5OHY in Texas. At last the higher bands are beginning to work again for me!
I descended via Goat’s Water to the Walna Scar Road and back to the car park.
Looking back to the summit with Coniston Water in the background
The path down to Goat’s Water
