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 was unsure what Airport Security would quite make of it. As it turns out, they didn’t seem particularly interested in it at all. Certainly on the flight back from Belfast I didn’t even have to get my radio or antenna out of my back to allow it to be searched. They were quite happy for electronics (including my laptop) to be kept in your backpack and simply scanned through the X-Ray machine. I should note of course that, being based in England,this was not an international flight for me.
Below Cairngaver there’s a woodland with some walking routes signposted throughout, however none of these go to the summit. There is a trail marked on some maps, but I found in very overgrown on the ground.
Having seen some photos online of “No Trespassing” signs up at the summit, and being close enough to the summit from the edge of the woodland within in the SOTA rules – I decided to activate from the woodland. Checking my GPS watch, it gave me an elevation of 207m, and the summit is marked on the map at 217m.
So I picked a quiet clearing and unpacked my kit.
The kit that I used for this activation wasn’t my usual SOTA kit – but it was certainly a workable setup. I used a TX-500 HF radio into an MC-750 vertical telescopic whip. I used a digirig to add digital capability to the TX-500 and I performed this activation entirely on FT8. I generally much prefer voice for SOTA activations, but it’s good to try different approaches to test your capabilities and kit.
Successes
I think this activation was a general success all round. This was my first activation using only FT8 and my first activation using the TX-500. Plus of course, my first activation on a summit in Northern Ireland.
Failures
It’s quite a minor thing and something people will disagree with this, but instead of my usual POTAflex-6 coax this time I was using the much smaller RG174A/U, which is lightweight, very thin, and practically completely invisible on the forest floor. I’m sure some people like this kind of thing for it’s “stealth activation” appeal, however I generally feel that I’m far more likely to stand on it or trip over it. The RG174A/U is definitely lighter and more easily packable – but the fact that my POTAflex is bright yellow it a great feature to stop me falling over it.
It rained a little during this activation too, which is no problem for the TX-500, but was somewhat of a concern for the Lenovo Carbon X1 that I was using at the time. This is one of the reasons why I like the ToughPad FZ-M1 so much for this type of thing. I’d definitely have been less worried about the rain if I was using that device instead – but we have to activate with what we’ve got, and the X1 Carbon is what I had!
