The priority function of the New Year trip was to check on Marianne's dad after
a very serious operation. Thankfully, he was getting stronger day by day, but did
enjoy and benefit from the company of his daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren
for most of each day. So that harshly minimised the activating opportunities, as
did the weather which was pretty bobbins throughout.
The good bit about spending time with Captain Jimmy (Jimmy M3EYP's grandad - a
retired sea captain) was watching his incredible proficiency at betting - five
consecutive winners viewed on the 'At The Races' TV channel netting well over
£1000, and a treble on the football on New Years Day bagging £400. The down side
was enduring his new habit of chain smoking, which he seems to have picked up
after the all-clear...
The nearest thing we got to a pass-out was the afternoon of Wednesday 2nd
January 2008 when Marianne suggested I take the boys out for a drive. It was
already nearly 2pm, so barely a couple of hours of daylight left.
So we motored from Larne into Belfast, across the city to the south side of
Belfast Lough and in the Bangor direction. Our target was Cairngaver (silent
'g'), GI/MM-017, quite close to the Northern Irish Assembly at Stormont. I had
done this one before, but Jimmy needed it as a licence holder. He had been there
with me before of course, so he directed me successfully to the tarmac road that
winds its way up to a small car park.
A ferocious biting wind was blasting over the summit from the Irish Sea, so we
left Liam in the car listening to Downtown Radio. Jimmy and I walked up to and
beyond the trig point, and then across a few flat fields to try to find a good
activating spot, but it was more hit-and-miss really. I initially tried 2m SSB
with the SOTA Beams MFD mounted horizontally above by rucksack on my back. No
joy here, so fixed the MFD on vertically and tried on 2m FM. With great
difficulty and discomfort in the conditions, we eventually got four contacts
each, taking a total of one hour and ten minutes. The desensing caused by the
transmitter back near the trig point was severe, and left us asking for repeats
of suffixes and reports. Perhaps the buffeting wind got to me, but I didn't
think to try 2m FM with the MFD horizontally polarised.
It had gone dark by the time we had returned to the car and were packing away
the gear. We were back in Larne just after 6pm, and sitting down to a most
welcome roast beef dinner. Thanks to the following stations, all worked on
2m FM with 5 watts:
MI0GDO |
Antrim |
Robert |
T, J |
MI3LJQ/M |
Belfast |
Billy |
T, J |
MI0JAA |
Maghaberry |
Ivan |
T, J |
MI1DJW |
Crumlin |
Jim |
T |
MI1EYP/M |
Ballyskeagh |
Tom |
J |
|