My hiking partner and I figured we’d tick Pendle Hill off the list of Southern Pennines we’re yet to activate. On paper it looked like an easy activation, simply park up at SD 7719 3855 and walk up the gentle slop of Pendle Hill. Although just as we were parking I heard a SOTA station …
It’s pretty rare for me to have a “failed” activation, but a recent trip to Scotland led to just that – so I figured I’d share a story of a successful summit but not a successful activation. Any other day of the year this would likely have been an easy activation – but we were …
For some reason, I’ve put off activating Longridge Fell for a while. I’ve often passed it and could have activated it but always gone elsewhere. I think the fact that it’s only small (350m) and has a short hike in (1.5km) pushed me to tick off other summits like Pendle Hill and Fair Snape Fell …
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 around my day job can be tricky. The first summit planned was Shining Tor, and it turned out to be the nicest hike of the four – …
I originally planned to activate The Cloud on Saturday morning and then head off to the Peak Wildlife Park – however, plans quickly changed when I made contact with MW7MWZ who explained that Gun (G/SP-013) was practically around the corner and “about a 3 minute hike from the parking spot.” So unusually for me, here’s …
Read more “SOTA Activation: The Cloud and Gun – G/SP-015 and G/SP-013”
This weekend I completed four SOTA summits, saving the biggest for last. For Whernside, I hiked in from the roadhead at SD 763 793 up to the summit along the “Three Peaks Walk” (SD760816, SD755825, SD740823) making this hike about 13 km total with an ascent of about 445 meters. There are a couple of …
This week I needed to travel to Northern Ireland for work and so I planned to take my TX-500 HF radio with me, and my MC-750 antenna to allow me to activate a SOTA summit just outside of Belfast, where I would be working. I’d never flown with a setup quite like this previously, so …
I had a day off work at short notice, so did the only sensible thing: planned a SOTA activation. I picked Kinder Scout since I’ve activated most of the South Pennies and figured I’d drag nearly 6Kg of radio kit up there whilst I was at it. I packed my FT-857D and my MC-750, plus …
Easington Fell is an easy activation, with plenty of parking and a short, relatively flat, hike in. It’s a great option if you’re not up to a challenging hike but still want to grab some SOTA points. That said, it’s still a pretty darn scenic spot too. Overall, it should have been a great activation…it …
For this activation, we parked just off Rochdale Road (SD 81049 18201) although good parking spots on this side of the fell were very limited. The plan was to walk along the road to the start of the public footpath at SD 81388 17834 and then walk along the base of the hill in the …