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 …
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 …
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”
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 …
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 …
For this activation we parked at Nick of Pendle, however on the approach to the parking spot I heard another SOTA operator (G5AIB) call CQ from the top of Great Coum. I managed to grab the contact on the truck radio from a small layby and then we quickly relocated to a better spot to …
This was a solo activation during a weekday so I wasn’t sure how easily I would pick up the required 4 QSOs on VHF, however it turned out to be a pretty simple and quick activation. I parked at Bowden Bridge Car Park – which holds about 28 cars, but when I returned I found …
This activation was one of those days where I unexpectedly had a free evening, so I messaged a friend who has their Foundation license and asked if they wanted to do a “Rapid SOTA”. This was met by confusion as they expected that this was a specific kind of activation, perhaps like a “60 Minute …
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 …