After much research, advice, shopping, antenna building and soldering, today I did my first SOTA summit activations.
I’d planned to do four summits, but battery charging took longer than expected so I only had one charged to use. So I decided to skip G/WB-024 Aconbury Hill partly due to the batteries and partly due to my not knowing the terrain, so decided to start with G/WB-013 Garway Hill as this hill is well known to me as I have spent many long nights up there on the radio in the times when you could still drive up to the very top. Next stop would be GW/SW-020 Graig Syfyrddian which is the next closest and another hill I used to drive to the top of in my Mini 1000 for some all night radio. Final stop was GW/SW-026 Bryn Arw, a smaller top in the Black Mountains I recently visited for the first time knocking off some geocaches. I skipped GW/SW-016 Ysgyryd Fawr as with it being the weekend and a lovely day it would be teeming with people.
G/WB-013 Garway Hill
I parked at the end of the track at SO444247 and set off for the fairly gentle half mile walk and 64 metres of ascent. This is a good thing as my sack weight was pretty hefty. Hefty enough to start me thinking I should add an FT-857 to the family of FT-897D and FT-817 I currently have.
The familiar summit building at the top.
A few of the locals.
View from the top with two summits in distance, one of them my next stop.
My portable station ready for unpacking.
Time to set up the antenna. As my coax is heavier than some and I like to use as much of my 8metre pole as possible I am velcro cable tieing the coax to the mast so it doesn’t hang off the pole and cause more of a bend than required.
Although it was such a light breeze and lovely day that the pole would probably self support on the fishing umbrella stake I am using at the mast base I still prefer to attach my guys. This also helps let me keep it nice and upright. I’m using white nylon cord for part of the guys but at the ground and the ends of the dipole I am using high visibility yellow nylon tent guys. These are £1 for a pack of four each 3.5metres from Poundland.
I decided to set up on one of the benches in the shade so I wouldn’t have to contend with the bright sun and reflections and also keep cool. I actually had to put my Goretex shell on as the light morning breeze was a little chilly.
Once switched on I could see there was something wrong with the radio. Where was my solid S7 to S8 of noise?! I always loved hilltop operating, and this is another reason to love it! I probably could have turned off my base station DSP settings if I had thought about it.
I started on 40m as I have not yet used 40m as no antenna at home, but it seemed a bit manic with a lot of Italian sounding strong rag chewing going on. So I reverted back to 20m. I worked a few portable stations tuning around the band then found myself a clear frequency and spotted myself on the SOTAwatch using Rucksack Radio Tool via the internet on the 3 network. A couple of calls and the pileup started. I was surprised how well the spotting works! This was like old times contesting. However I soon found my make do enquiries pad I brought for logging was greatly lacking for a single op. First item on the things to improve next time!
After about 40 minutes the pileup had gone and I had 40 QSOs total in the log. I’d also used 2.3Ah of my 8.4Ah battery. I got three Summit to Summit contacts too.
All in I am pretty pleased with the first activation and all the equipment.
Onto the next summit GW/SW-020 Graig Syfyrddin…