To activate Fair Snape Fell we ascended via that Parlick side of the fell, parking near Fell Foot at SD 60158 44217. We took the “easy route” up Parlick via the west side of the fell, heading towards SD 59532 44661. Once at the summit we took a couple of photographs at the trig point and then moved away from the summit to start the activation.
This was a fairly simple activation and our main goal was to assess the benefit of a lightweight tent which we had recently picked up for when the weather gets a little more interesting. The aim was simply to determine whether the benefit of the tent outweighed the weight of carrying the thing on the ascent! I’d also picked up a foldable solar panel and was curious to see if it was any benefit – I was thinking that it would be good to keep our mobile phones charged on longer activations.
Once we reached a spot that looked good for the activation, we pegged down the tarp and got to work on the tent. This was our first time putting up this tent and so I expected complete failure – but the truth is, even in the wind, it took only a few minutes to put up. However, I could hardly breath whilst we did it for laughing. Of course, it’s good practice to test putting the tent up in the garden first, but it’s a lot funnier to do it on the hillside!
After putting the poles through the wrong holes and then assembling the tent into the wind, we eventually got it all sorted and sat inside. It was brilliant.
Whilst you’re adding 1.5kg or so to your pack weight to bring the tent (or in this case, 750g each as we split it between two activators) the feeling of getting into the tent and therefore out of the wind was just great. It also offers the benefit of getting your kit out of the rain – however we were blessed with clear skies on this activation.
I started my activation by making contact with G4WPS at 12:26 UTC before immediately contacting G6AEK, using the IC-705 with an RH-205 telescopic antenna.. I then called CQ…and I called CQ…and I called CQ…and no stations responded. That’s fine though because as I was operating on the IC-705 I could swap over to HF and get some contacts at a greater distance. This is where I realised that I had forgotten to pack the base of my HF antenna, the part which connects the tripod to the base of the telescopic antenna – and importantly, where you connect the coax. This was a failure that I was not prepared for and I did not have an alternative – and so we were stuck on VHF only – and there were no stations responding.
After tearing my backpack apart twice and confirming for sure that I did not have the connector, not did I have an alternative method of getting on HF, I swapped back to the calling channel and waited. At 12:43 another station called CQ and I made contact with M7CGD, quickly followed by M0CQE and my activation was valid! That was four QSOs within 20 minutes but that pause in the middle felt like a lifetime and now the contents of my backpack were distributed across the inside of the tent.
However things soon started looking better when MW0PJE shouted up for a summit to summit (S2S)! That’s G/SP-007 to GW/NW-054, a distance of about 90km. The audio was really difficult and I gave him an initial signal report of only 43. He was workable but right down in the noise. Interestingly I heard him connect with another station later on and was an easy 59 – so perhaps bad luck, a bad antenna connection, or a beam in the wrong direction – no idea, but very happy for the S2S.
I then contacted M0LJH before quickly getting a second summit to summit with M0TKG on Winter Hill, G/SP-001 – a shot of about 33km. Interestingly I had activated Winter Hill only the week before and so this allowed me to “complete” that summit (having both activated and chased it). In total we spent about 90 minutes at the summit before heading back down to the car.
Failures
Although a successful activation, this was arguably one of my biggest failures for an activation, having bothered to carry most of a HF capability up the hill but having failed to bring the antenna connector and so failing to get on any HF bands. The learning point here is two things, the first is that instead of having “HF Antenna” on my kit list, I have updated this list to specifically list each part of the antenna (tripod, connector, base, whip) so that I can ensure it all goes in the pack. Additionally, there’s a comment to be made about “two is one, one is none”, as I had no secondary capability when the first one failed. I actually own a Moonraker MRW-HF100 antenna set, and so I added the whip, 14MHz coil and 21MHz coil to my pack. That’s a spare antenna that will get me on two bands and it weighs effectively nothing at all.
Successes
We all like summit to summit contacts and I was lucky enough to get two on this activation. Also, although it was pretty cloudy, the foldable solar panel worked perfectly – useful to know for longer activations.