South Wales SOTA Trip - Day 6 (part 7) - Friday 27th May 2015

From Ruardean Hill G/WB-021, we motored across the county of Gloucestershire to the town of Cheltenham, out the other side and up through the little villages to its east.  Time seemed to be ticking very fast as we drove up the steep and seemingly endless lane to the transmitter masts at the top.

We now had a battle against the clock, against rapidly fading daylight and plummeting temperatures.  During set-up, I noticed a breakage in my Micro Z antenna tuner, which meant no HF - unless I was going to go back to my car and collect a different antenna.  That would have cost around 15 minutes.  With dusk in full swing, I reckoned that I couldn't even afford that.

So, how was I going to qualify the summit, and most importantly make a contact on either 10m or 6m to collect the Challenge multiplier?  I decided to join Jimmy on 2m FM, and see if anyone worked on there might fancy trying on 6m FM.  My Yaesu VX7R handheld was with me!  Stewart G0LGS, a local to Cheltenham, was first in the log, and immediately he agreed to the 50MHz FM experiment.  He was soon in the log on that band too, and that meant the multiplier was secure.

Jimmy and I completed the activation on 2m FM, although one station did also want to work me on 6m FM.  We both qualified, hurriedly packed up and got back to the car.  It was past 10pm local, and we had an evening meal to consider.  The plan was to eat at the first motorway services encountered on the M5.  Sadly, the food option here was McDonald's.  Oh well, it had to be I guess.