Winter Hill - 10GHz

Old Reflector
1

I did an unplanned SOTA activation of Winter Hill on 10GHz today. Unplanned because I was doing some tests with someone in Northern Ireland and had intended operating from the car. In the event, there was no good spot for this and so I had to walk some way with the gear to get a suitable sight-line, thus I was properly portable in the SOTA sense of the word. Fortunately, I had the SLAB with me to allow this.

The test to NI was with Geoff GI0GDP on Agnew’s Hill GI/AH-005. Geoff was testing a new 10GHz portable set-up. The test failed for some unknown reason - possibly just too far at 255km although I am inclined to suspect there were other factors involved. Prior to the NI test, I had a pleasant chat with Russ G4PBP on 10GHz SSB (59 both ways); 119km.

There are signs of growing interest in 10GHz; Geoff being the third person that has tested new 10GHz portable systems with me in the past week. As is the way with this rather more experimental radio, none of them managed to work me although my system is fully working. Getting these systems going reliably is all part of the fun of course.

There is a photo on the Flickr group.

73

Richard
G3CWI

2

FB Richard. Geoff had a considerably greater ‘slog’ than you did by the sounds of it! I have done Agnew’s Hill three times, and while not difficult, it takes a bit of effort to get up there. (It is the closest SOTA summit to Marianne’s original home town of Larne, and there’s no “St” in its name BTW).

In April 2003 I had an S2S from GI/AH-005 to Alan M1EYO on Black Combe G/LD-030. It might have been the 1st G to GI S2S.

Anyway, it’s nice to see that the 10G enthusiasm might be having another burst, and that there might be someone regularly activating those fine GI SOTA summits.

Tom M1EYP