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 first. However, now that I’ve activated it I can say that it’s a great little summit and well worth the visit. My opinion may have been helped the fact that we had good weather and great visibility on the day – but we were up and down, including activating, in only 90 minutes and having a great time the whole way.
We parked on Forty Acre Lane at approximately SD 6441 4007, although there is a small car park further along marked on Google Maps as “Jeffrey Hill” with space for a maybe 15 cars. We took the footpath at SD 6445 4006, which makes it about 1.5km easy hike to the summit. It was a little wet underfoot with boggy patches but these weren’t too hard to avoid.
The summit of Longridge is relatively flat so the activation zone is quite wide. This means if you select your spot well you can either shoot over towards Manchester or Northbound to get Blackpool, Fleetwood, and the smaller villages like Chipping. I decided to start the activation on the northside, right at the trig point and got stations in South Shore (Blackpool), Fleetwood, and Hambleton – all with good strong signals.
I also managed to get a summit to summit thanks to M0JKS sitting on Hail Storm Hill. I offered to spot for him since I had just a little bit of signal from this summit, but he declined as he had already made his activation, had his lunch, and was planning to descend.
I got the four contacts required for the activation in about 10 minutes, but always like to get a couple extra “for good luck” and so was torn between jumping back on the calling channel or just taking the easy activation and descending. I decided for a middle ground of moving to the other side of the fell to try and make a contact towards Manchester. On the way to the new spot I picked up G6WBS on the summit of LD-053 talking to another station and managed to jump the queue for a second summit to summit contact. His signal was weak, but workable. I could understand his messages clearly but he was only showing as a single blip on the S-meter. Signal reports of 51 both ways and then I called it a day and headed back to the car.
Successes
This was a first proper outing for my new ICOM ID-50 which I paired with a new Diamond RH-770. I was very happy with how the ID-50 performed and I trust it a lot more than my previous handheld to pick up those weak signals. I swapped from the R-205 to the RH-770 due to the design of the 770 meaning that it should perform well without the need for a counterpoise or ground. I’ve not performed any side by side tests, but I was happy with the performance on the day. The 205 seems a little more sturdy, but they’re both Diamond antennas – so well built.
Failures
Nothing went wrong during this activation, so nothing to work on before the next one. My hiking partner however did comment that I’ve done the last five activations on a handheld, but I still insist on carrying a HF transceiver. I don’t think I’ll be leaving home without HF capability anytime soon – but it is funny to carry so much kit up the hill, for it to sit silently in the pack the whole time. Perhaps it’s time for a HF-only activation!
