GW4TEE	Bwcle	Viv	2m	FM
2E0RJM	Tarporley	Roger	2m	FM
G0HBU	Haydock	Allan	2m	FM
G7SKR	South Warrington	Dave	2m	FM
2E0BMO	Standish	Roger	2m	FM
M0DSK	Audley	Richard	20m	SSB
M1DDD	Quarnford	Nick	20m	SSB

 

Saturday 7th November 2009, and with the household chores completed by lunchtime, it was then the (slightly) more pleasurable 'chore' of preparing soup for the flask. What flavours did I have three tins of for my one litre flask? Answer - none. Only two tins were in the cupboard - one Baxter's Lobster Bisque and one Spinnaker's Bouillabaisse. Solution - chuck the two in together for a 'unique' seafood soup (and delicious it was too).

Lunch prepared and packed in the rucksack, it was off in the car to Gun G/SP-013, high in the Staffordshire Moorlands. It had been raining all morning, so I booted up, knowing that the path to the summit would be very wet. After a slow ascent, restricted by hopping between the dry - no, I mean 'less wet' patches of ground, I chose my operating position just past the trig point in the direction of the farmhouse.  First up went my £11 Sainsbury's tent that I deploy for contest sessions of three hours or more, and then the SOTA Beam, mounted horizontally at a height of 4m AGL / 389m ASL. Everything went to plan, and the station was ready at 1350z with ten minutes to spare. Cue the first serving of Lobster Bouillabaisse Bisque, and a few 'QRL's on a chosen frequency.

       

I began with a run of six contacts on 144.045MHz CW, after which it was slow going! 5, 15 or even 25 minutes would separate QSOs, but by the end of my three-hour window, I was on serial number 015. Poor in terms of the contest - but not at all bad for a 2m CW SOTA activation!  On the plus side, I had worked into France and the Netherlands on 5 watts, as well as S2S with Walt G3NYY/P on Ruardean Hill G/WB-021. At 5pm, it was dark, and raining hard. It was also bitingly cold. Packing everything away was an unpleasant chore that made that morning's housework seem like a picnic. At least the descent to the car was fairly rapid, as I had decided I didn't care where I was putting my feet!

The 25 minute drive back to Macclesfield took me not to my home QTH initially, but to the Bull pub at Broken Cross. Richard G3CWI/P met here for a pint and debrief. I was jealous of his 43 contacts including many into DL, and questioned my own insistence on combining VHF contest entries with SOTA activating!  Richard suggested that an early start on Sunday morning, taking advantage of beating the sunrise, would be advantageous. So I made sure I got a nice early night - at 1am (well I had to watch the World Heavyweight fight, BBC1 Match of the Day, ITV FA Cup highlights and check my emails...).

Jimmy was back at Barnswood scout camp for his Explorer scouts' Christmas Camp over the weekend. I knew I had to pick him up from there at 3pm on Sunday 13th December 2009, so when Sean M0GIA telephoned to say he was going up Gun G/SP-013, the afternoon's plans all clicked into place.  After the essential pre-Christmas card/gift exchange at relatives in Flash, I then dropped back across the Staffordshire Moorlands to the Gun parking spot, between Meerbrook and Rushton Spencer. Sean was on his way, with Greg 2E0RXX.

Immediately over the stile, Sean started to gear up with his HF pedestrian mobile system, so he was left lagging behind. Greg pushed onto the summit to set his own HF multiband antenna up, with Liam close behind and then me.  A biting cold wind had me carefully selecting a relatively sheltered spot just off the summit to pitch the small tent. Once that was done, in crawled Liam to commence his afternoon's Nintendo DS activities, while I set up the 80m dipole for the first time in ages. Although it was Gun, and they weren't needed for the walk, I talk a pair of Leki poles with me, specifically to use to support the ends of the dipole legs slightly higher off the ground. I have found that this makes dramatic differences to the SWR indication.

Everything was set up and ready to go - but it was nearly 3pm. So I had to descend, drive down a couple of lanes and pick Jimmy up from Barnswood. Then drive back up to the parking area again, and ascend Gun for a second time.  Jimmy brought his 2m handheld with him and soon made a contact on 2m FM. But only one. I then worked a good number with strong signals on 80m CW, while Jimmy crawled into the tent to join Liam and I away from the biting cold of the December air.

After working down the pile-up on 3.549MHz CW, I announced (in CW) a QSY to 3.660MHz SSB. The last station I worked on CW - Fritz DL4FDM - kindly replied back acknowledging the QSY and saying that he would spot. This was much appreciated.  Unfortunately, that part of the band was very congested, so I was forced to find a clearer area around 3.639MHz SSB and self-spot anyway. In haste, I neglected to change the default '1' to a '3' on my Spotlite, but the chasers knew that they were talking to Jimmy, and indeed Martyn M1MAJ posted the correct spot - thank you.

The frequency came alive, and Jimmy had a big pile-up to work through. I left him to it, and exited the tent to see how Greg 2E0RXX/P and Sean M0GIA/P were getting on. They weren't. Sean had made two QSOs on 20m SSB including one to Italy, while Greg had managed a big fat zero on a variety of HF bands.  Sean began to descend, while I spotted Greg on 7.055MHz SSB. Still his calls were not answered. Jimmy's ongoing pile-up suggested that plenty of chasers were monitoring SOTAwatch at the time, so I wondered about the effectiveness of Greg's antenna system. Jimmy completed working down his frequency, so then we were all packing away, and following Sean down the boggy path to the cars.

Sean and Greg had an oncoming deadline to hit, so the customary pub stop at the Harrington Arms in Gawsworth was attended just by Liam, Jimmy and myself. The Robbies Old Scrooge was lovely (even though I partook in far too much of it two nights previously), and we all took advantage of the pub's fine range of proper pork scratchings and Burts chips.  It was very pleasant to be back on 80m again; thanks for the contacts: