The walk up Cyrn-y-Brain GW/NW-043, from behind the cafe, always seems a relative breeze after getting the longer and more strenuous Moel y Gamelin GW/NW-042 out of the way, and energised by a good feed. In a couple of weak moments I wondered about having another go at the "heather shortcut" from the corner of the radio station access road that winds its way up to this summit. Sensibly, I decided not to try it, and stuck with the easy, and strangely enjoyable service road walk. Even the last section, which is a rather steep final approach, did not present any barrier and I felt in decent shape for once.

Once at the summit on Saturday 30th January 2016, I was quickly reminded of the cold wind, so sought shelter around the back of the transmitting station. Again, I found 10m to be dead, and there were no signs of life on 6m either. And then I hit a snag. I did my trick of going onto 2m to work some chasers and hopefully persuade some to QSY and give me a 6m or 10m contact. But the 2m band was filled with S9+ of noise from the radio station behind me. Over the years I have heard many complain about this, but this was the first time I had personally suffered from it.

I went back onto 10m CW and left the Palm Cube on auto-repeat CQing while I self-spotted. After a while, Frank G3RMD and Andy G8MIA called, so that was the multiplier taken care of. With no-one else calling on CW, I self-spotted for 10m SSB, and this time Dave M6RUG and John G4TQE were worked. Dave advised me that plenty of stations, including himself, were calling me back on 2m, but that I obviously couldn't hear them.

I returned to the 2m FM calling channel and called again, but announced that I was listening 28.480MHz SSB, explaining that the QRM on summit meant that I couldn't receive incoming calls on 2m. This did attract Pete G4RRM, who was one of those that had tried to return my call on 2m earlier.

So just five QSOs in the log for the Cyrn-y-Brain activation, but I didn't worry. I had the summit point, and I had the Challenge multiplier, and I wanted to be home fairly soon anyway. I was home by 2.50pm, which I think must be a new record for me after a day on the Ponderosa Pair!  Many thanks to all chasers who called in.