Friday 30th May 2008 was the second day of our surprise end-of-holiday pass, and what an eventful day it turned out to be. It was the day that Jimmy and myself both complete the G/SE region, and the day of our first ever activations in G/SC (yes, really, six years of SOTA and never been here - my debuts in all the other G regions were years ago!). It was the day that Jimmy M3EYP would record his 200th SOTA activation - not bad for a 15 year old. But the defining moment of the day was something completely different, and not at all pleasant. But more of that later!

   

We got up for breakfast at the Comfort Inn, Arundel, and thoroughly enjoyed the buffet of yoghurt, grapefruit, mandarins, cereal, fruit juice, toast, tea and full English cooked breakfast. I remained impressed that the bed & breakfast for the three of us had come to just £65. We were on the road again by around 8.30am, and heading the short distance to Chanctonbury Ring G/SE-009.

Jimmy directed me back down the A27 and up the A24, into the village of Washington and doubling back on ourselves to the parking point at TQ120119. The walking route followed a stony bridleway up a gentle ridge, and continued to follow the South Downs Way past the trig point of Chactonbury Hill to the ring fort and new summit location. A few poses for photographs at Chanctonbury Ring were our only business with that location, and we retreated to the trig point, a much better SOTA activating position.

       

On this occasion, calls on 2m using the handy and RSS did not produce any response, so we set up for 80m. At least it was still relatively early in the morning, and so a better chance would be had. Indeed it was, and this was assisted by my returning to the tactic of activating on 3.557MHz CW first, and then announcing the QSY to 3.660MHz SSB once the pile-up was cleared. A reassuring aspect noted was that after I had sent "QSY SSB 3.660", someone would always send a "R", to which I would then send "TU". This was good stuff, and gave me confidence that people would be listening for Jimmy on SSB, or that the QSY would have been spotted, or both.

   

We completed the activation, packed up and set off on the descent, chasing after Liam who, as usual, had commenced his descent ten minutes earlier when we started packing up. This took us to 14 out of the 15 G/SE summits activated, and one to go for the set. We set off for that last one, Black Down G/SE-003.  Many thanks to the following stations, all worked on 80m with 5 watts: