Thursday 24th January 2008:  I peered out of my classroom window as the last groups of pupils for the day were being dismissed from their exhilarating and motivational mathematical educational experience. A cloudless deep blue sky, illuminated by bright sunlight. An extra hour's work on the desktop, or an hour on a felltop? No contest!

So half-an-hour's drive from Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent, to Gun G/SP-013 in the Staffordshire Moorlands. The weather was indeed dry, clear and sunny, but the wind was blasting in from the West, and as icy cold as ever. It certainly wasn't as nice as it looked from the inside of my classroom.

The area extending to a couple of metres all around the stile at the start of the ascent was completely waterlogged, so I clambered over the gate instead. As I walked up to the summit, I realised it was a good deal colder than on my recent activations - including the early morning ones. I continued over the summit and someway down the other side to gain shelter from the prevailing wind while remaining within the activation zone.

I moved around a bit in the 7.030 to 7.033 MHz area, trying to find a clear frequency and trying to escape the stronger stations that landed on my frequency without hearing me. I only made four contacts in over 30 minutes operating. The first was Fritz DL4FDM, followed by HB9BYZ. As the skies began to darken, I worked OM1ADM, so I was getting exactly the same increased distance in exactly the same direction yet again as night came on. Surely the next contact had to be OK or HA? No, it was Cris GM4FAM, who I haven't worked for a while, so that was a nice surprise.

With no further callers, and plenty of QRO stations jumping on me without hearing me - and more significantly, with my fingers turning to ice - I decided it was time to go home. I flicked on the headtorch for the first time, just to track the legs of the dipole for winding in and unpegging, then wandered down the shallow sloshy slope to the car. It should have been lovely in the middle of dusk with clear views across the illuminated towns of Leek, Biddulph, Mow Cop, Congleton and Macclesfield before me, but I was now walking head-on into the icy wind - not pleasant!

Thanks to the following stations, all worked on 40m CW with 5 watts:

Getting one's rucksack, water, soup, clothes, boots, coat, batteries etc ready, even for some local activations, is time-consuming work. Doing it times three is exhausting stuff. At least Jimmy sorted out his and Liam's clothes which saved me a job, and also put the SOTAwatch Alerts on for me.

But the job was done, and I was flopped down at my PC in the shack, late in the evening, with the last can of Stella in the house, and looking forward to a bit of SOTA for the next day.  Five points would be a relative bumper haul for me these days! Jimmy would cop for seven. He was amused when putting on the Alerts that we were scheduled to do SP-013 at 1300 and SP-015 at 1500. I suggested that we get up at 0200 and do SP-004 at 0400, and have a rest in between. His amusement suddenly ended abruptly; I can't imagine why.

Well, we had a good day. The main objective was to see if Jimmy could activate on 40m using SSB, QRP and SPOTlite. The answer was yes, although it didn't work out on the third summit of the day. Dusk was approaching though, there were no gaps between the contest stations, and they themselves could no longer hear our QRP as the skip started to get longer. But considering that we wanted to test these working conditions in order to have a better chance of qualifying Kisdon G/NP-026 (and others with poor VHF take-off) the next time we go there, it was good to confirm that we could either nominate a frequency (or be spotted) on SOTAwatch via SPOTlite, or answer the contest stations if an event was on. This all worked fine before 4pm.

From Shining Tor G/SP-004, we headed along the lanes via Bottom o'th' Oven, Forest Chapel, Wildboarclough, Wincle and Danebridge towards Gun G/SP-013. The walk up was simple enough, and somewaht less waterlogged than a visit a couple of days earlier. The wind was at our backs on the ascent, so we continued on the path beyond the summit to set up a few metres lower on the other side. This time, establishing one's own QRG was more challenging, but Jimmy was able to pick up his contacts by answering the contest calls. Unfortunately, one DL contest station refused to work him - I had already worked this station, and he said to Jimmy "Already in the log". Jimmy replied "No, you worked M1EYP/P, I am M3EYP/P, a different station". The DL station replied "Already in the log, no QSO, 73"! Hmmm - maybe the matching suffix idea was not one of our best after all!

Time was getting on, and we were at least an hour behind our published SOTAwatch Alerts schedule. Straight on with the ten minute drive across to Cloudside, and The Cloud G/SP-015.  Thanks to the following stations worked in the activation:

Many thanks to G4ERP for the contact: