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 many cars parked along Kinder Road so there seems to be plenty of space for parking.
The summit of Kinder Scout is very flat, so given that SOTA generally allows for you to activate anywhere within 25 vertical meters of the summit there are plenty of quiet spots to choose from, even on busy days. When I got to the summit it was very very windy and it was difficult to find a decent spot that was out of the wind on such a flat summit – so I made my way over to Kinder Low which has some standing rocks which make for decent cover. On previous activations I have created a tarp shelter using a hiking pole and a small tarp – however when trying this on such a windy day, the wind managed to pull three of the eyelets out of the tarp as it was putting so much pressure on the shelter.
Given the look of the clouds and the threat of rain, I managed to make the tarp shelter work and combining the tarp with one of the standing rocks I eventually got some decent cover to operate under.
For this activation I was carrying a Yaesu FT-857D, and an 8ah LiFePo4 battery. I initially jumped on VHF with an RH-205 and quickly made contact with M0LMZ at 0925 UTC. He offered to spot me, and that is always greatly appreciated – thank you!
I then made contact with G1KDQ, M0JKS, and finally G1AJI at 0931 UTC. Thanks to everyone that came back to me.
My main goal for this activation was to make some contacts on FT8 using my ToughPad into a DigiRig. The FT-857D doesn’t have a data capability, but the DigiRig mobile is a tiny device that connects to the back of the radio and adds this feature. The ToughPad is a ruggedised laptop with a 7 inch touchscreen that allows me to control the DigiRig.
When I swapped over to HF I was getting a really high SWR report on the FT-857D and so I fussed around a while with the radio and the coax and eventually noticed that I hadn’t deployed the radials on the MC-750 antenna that I was using! Given the high winds I was not sure how well the radials would stay in place or how much of a disaster it would quickly become but in reality on the day – it was absolutely fine. I didn’t have any problems with the wind affecting the base of the antenna at all. With the SWR addressed and the ToughPad ready to go, I made two more contacts to LA6JEA and finally DO9BAU at 10:16 UTC, on 15 meters.
Failures
Whilst it wasn’t a complete disaster, the failure of the tarp was a little surprising – but it was damn windy. The shelter isn’t essential to the activation, but it generally gets the wind off you and gives you somewhere to place the radios to keep the rain off them. I believe the failure was in part due to how I was constructing the shelter (placing the “spike” of the hiking pole through the eyelets) and this could be changed to prevent this failure in the future.
Successes
This was my first activation using the ToughPad FZ-M1 to made data contacts on FT8 and given the device weighs only 550 grams it was a perfect device for this purpose. Additionally, as the touchscreen works with either your finger or the pen, it’s possible to use the device whilst wearing gloves, which is useful. Overall I’m very happy with its performance.