I planned an ambitious trip for this weekend, planning to activation four SOTA summits in three days. The hiking wasn’t too ambitious, but fitting in trips like this between my day job and the work I do with SAR can be tricky. The first summit planned was Shining Tor, and it turned out to be the nicest hike of the four – and one I’d definitely recommend.
To activation Shining Tor, you have several options: The “Short Route” from the A537 at SJ 996 726, which has a hike in of approximately 1.7 km from a parking spot and only a short climb. The “Ridge Route” from Pym Chair Car Park at SJ 992 767, which is a longer route that includes Cats Tor. Or what I would call the “Scenic Route” up from Errwood Hall Parking at SK 010 748.
For this activation, I took the Scenic Route, and I’d definitely recommend it if you’ve got the time as it allows a short wander around the ruins of Errwood Hall which are en route between the car park and the summit. Plus the surrounding woodland is very nice too. Although it’s the biggest climb of the three routes with an ascent of about 280 meters.
The track is well marked, but it was a little wet underfoot.
For this activation (and in fact all four activations this weekend) I completed all of the required QSOs with just my handheld (AnyTone 878) and an RH205 telescopic whip…although I did carry my TX-500, I just didn’t turn it on. Since this weekend was 145 Alive, I’d like to claim this was intentional to encourage people to get on the 2m band or something – but in reality, I just like to mix it up on activations and felt like using the handheld! Since there seemed to be lots of stations on the band on each activation, I just kept on with the handheld all weekend.
As the airwaves were very busy, I did end up in a situation where another station shouted at me for the supposed infraction of stealing their frequency, which is always bizarre to me. From my perspective what happened was: I listened on a frequency for several minutes and heard no stations. I then moved to the calling channel and called CQ SOTA, and requested the stations responding to change frequency to the available channel I have just monitored. When moving to that channel I asked “Is this frequency in use?” and waited. I heard the other station state that they heard nothing at their end, and I confirmed nothing heard at my end. I then quickly rattled through four or five QSOs with various stations over several minutes before someone shouted up:
“This frequency is in use! You should have asked!”
After hearing this, I immediately announced that I would change frequency – and then began to fuss around trying to find an available channel as my handheld doesn’t have a scope. All the while trying to make sure that the remaining stations that want to chase the summit knew where I’d gone, so that they can get their points.
The funny part to me was hearing someone angrily call out to me “You should have asked!“
I’m guessing what happened here is that when I set up for the activation, propagation was such that I could not hear those stations and neither could the station I was connecting with. However, after several QSOs with several stations, propagation must have changed and now we’re interfering with each other. From my point of view this is just a fact of life with radio and it happens, and the best thing to do is be polite, agree who’s going to move, and one of you changes frequency.
However, I just wanted to say that whilst this is a frustration of operating, try to give the other station the benefit of the doubt. In my opinion, generally when this occurs, the interference was unlikely to be intentional and repeatedly yelling “QSY! QSY!” into the microphone does little to expedite a solution to the problem. That said, from my point of view bumping into another station is a frustration but nothing that can’t be solved by spinning the dial and trying another frequency.
Thanks to all of the stations that came back to my CQ SOTA call, especially those who followed me across the band trying to find another available slot after we bumped into another station.
Failures
Nothing really went wrong on this activation, the weather was kind and propagation was effective!
Successes
I always like mixing it up with my activations; testing and training with different radios and methods. Since my last activation was on the TX-500 entirely digital (FT8), I figured I’d do the opposite and activate entirely on the handheld with FM voice. Overall I made 8 contacts, over about 15 minutes – so a fairly easy activation.
