Now that I finally achieved SOTA mountain goat I’ve got the following two goals:
Complete all my remaining unactivated LD SOTA fells.
Start doing some of the non-SOTA hill, which inevitably means WOTA and the occassional HEMA.
However, given the temperature today and the fact that one car was in the garage and one was being used for work by my daughter I decided on a known summit that I could access on the motorbike. High Rigg is a favourite that I hadn’t done this year, and knowing it is notoriously difficult to activate on VHF alone I made sure to check that the SOTABeams 40/30/20m dipole was complete - then left it on the bed.
So it was a bit of a surprise when I arrived to find it wasn’t in the rucksack, but at least I had the Spectrum Communications Slim-J and the 10m mast - short of a beam probably the best combination for VHF I’d be able to muster.
Contacts started well with a S2S with M0PVC/P on Scafell Pike then a good chat with Lee @M5LEE who helped then get a contact with Reg @2e0ldf on 145.475 which was a contact, whereas 145.525 wasn’t. Thanks to Geoff @GM4WHA who I could hear clearly but couldn’t hear me. I tried getting the Slim-J higher but the length of the RG58 is the restricting factor on the mast. Robin was the fourth qualifing contact for SOTA GM6LJE, then wow Richard made it through the Helvellyn range @M8XGO for what I think is our first S2S either SOTA or WOTA, very happy to finally hook up. Bill M0DXT was a healthy round-out of FM contacts. After this I thought I’d give anyone a chance who wanted a 2m SSB or CW contact but no takers, unsurprisingly but I think now I’ll try and make it a habit. Robin mentioned his 290 that he had to get on the ‘tick’ back in the day as an excellent multi-mode ‘handbag’ portable rig, I wonder if anyone else has used one from a summit? I’m very tempted based on my recent conversation about suitable 2m all-mode chaser rigs.
Whilst attempting to orient my antenna at approximately 45 degrees in case anyone had a horizontal antenna for 2m SSB or CW I found my roll of electrical tape failed me at a 2 degC - even with good nails I was unable to pull off a run of tape as it just kept breaking up. That was a surprise. I’ve had coax go stiff in the cold but wasn’t expecting that!
Thanks for everyone who made this once again a great activation. I visited the grave of John Richardson again today, if you want to know more about his connection to St John in the Vale see my previous activation report).
Oh and Thirlmere was, unsurprisingly, the highest level I’d ever seen.
Sounds like you did OK for contacts Mark , considering you were restricted to VHF on that particular summit . I’ve done it three times I think and always took HF but have actually managed to get the four contacts on 2m first on each occasion . There didn’t seem to be that many people on the air yesterday either , I thought , even considering it was Monday .
Last year I did Hallin Fell and was half way up before realising I’d left all my antennas back in the car HF and VHF/UHF . I cursed all the way back to the car I think .
Some nice photos , and great to get the S2S with the new call signs as well .
It’s strange how some frequency’s should work better than others and conditions change, when i first heard you in qso with Jake M0PVC/P you were Q5 strength 0 on 145.475 then on 145.525 with Lee M5LEE i could not hear you at all. With Lee’s help we made contact on .475 but now your signal was Q4 but perpectly readable, and at the end of the qso it went down to about a Q3
I’m not sure if that was down to conditions or maybe battery voltage dropping with the cold, but it was a good contact for what is a difficult Fell for me
It does raise a interesting point are some frequency’s better than others ?
After years of struggling to get many 2m contacts on High Rigg I dubbed that summit “VHF Bermuda Triangle”. My 2m contacts were: 2025 1; 2024 I didn’t bother, HF only; 2023 4 (but only after waiting ages for the 4th one); 2019 3.
I worked a station North of Berwick on Tweed from Place fell and he reported a difficult copy lower down the band , compared to the calling channel . As mentioned it may be conditions or topography at the point of TX or RX?
Mark was hearing Geoff OK the other day, but nothing at Geoff’s end , similar to what Reg said . I wonder if another frequency would have made a difference ?
These seem relatively small differences in frequencies but are taking different paths to different stations at various points on the compass .Over several miles the signal may pass through different localised atmospheric conditions like humidity and temperature variations as well as interacting with terrain . Is it possible that with less than strong signals certain frequencies are affected more noticeably by these factors ?
