This summit was activated by myself on Tuesday 30th December 2003.  My first visit however was one day previous, and was unsuccessful, as documented below.

I booked into the Bridges Youth Hostel in Shropshire for a couple of nights, and set off down the A534 to Nantwich, continuing on through Whitchurch, Oswestry, Llansilin and towards Moelfre.  Again I parked at Moelfre Hall and asked the gentleman in the house if I may walk up the track to the trig point and park in his yard.   He kindly granted both requests, and I set off up the winding track. Often coming past me was a land rover from a local outdoor centre, ferrying paragliders and their equipment to the summit.  As I arrived on the summit, they were making their final preparations to fly, and by the time I had finished my radio activity, they had all taken off! I wedged the SOTA Pole into the strong wire fence, thus not requiring use of the guying kit.  In contrast to the radio silence four days previous, this time I had no trouble making the contacts, seven in all including MW0YLS, G4JZF and M0COP.  I descended quickly and moved onto the nearby Mynydd-y-briw GW/NW-060.

Thanks to the following stations worked, all on 2m FM with 2.5 watts:

Unfortunately, the first attempt at this one went into the "failed" drawer, and a new kind of failure it was too.  I have had:   1) Climbing the wrong hill (Raw Head G/SP-016), 2) Couldn't find the start of the path (Freeholds Top G/SP-011), 3) Got to the coll and was too tired to push on with the final ascent (Yr Aran GW/NW-019), but now I have a more "ordinary" failure - but my first of these - couldn't rustle up the contacts! We drove from Macc to Congleton, and took the A534 to Nantwich.  We then followed signs for Whitchurch, Oswestry, B4580 to Llansilin, here turning right for Moelfre.  Down this lane, Moelfre Hall is on the right, and we pulled in here.  The first part of the track is also a PROW, but then the track winds back away from this and up to the summit.  I went to the house, watched nervously by a timid old looking dog with longing eyes. 

The lady of the house spoke to me through the window; I asked her permission to walk with the boys up to the trig point, and to leave my car in the yard.   She happily agreed to both, and so away we were (young children are very useful weapons in these negotiations, even though the walking then takes an eternity!). We followed the muddy track around past some cows (even more nervous than the dog) and one calf.  There appeared to be one bull, which stared intently at Liam's bright red waterproof and gaiters, but as my second inspection revealed udders (being stared at intently by the calf), the cows' nervousness overtook them and they all ran away.  We climbed the early track in light drizzle and under ever greying skies.  Regrettably, I did not make a timely decision to add on my waterproof overtrousers at this point, and another 5 minutes later there was not any point doing so anyway!  Thankfully, Jimmy and Liam's decision making was of a far higher calibre and they both insisted on being in full waterproofs from the start of the walk. The track turned and climbed more steeply, and I just about managed to drag Liam up it with Jimmy dawdling behind.  Around a couple more bends, and the track eased out again to be less steep as the summit was approached. 

By this time, the rain was very heavy, and the wind hard and cold.  I was worried that I should not 'push my luck' with Liam's asthma and decided to get within 25m vertically of the summit and activate as quickly as possible, ie with the rubber duck rather than the SOTA Beam.  Log keeping would have been near impossible in the rain, and so I was hoping to contact Dave M0DFA with whom I had been in QSO during the last part of the drive, and try and persuade him to log on my behalf and email the results back to me! However, there was absolutely no response to my CQ calls on S20.  I could get into GB3VT the Stoke-on-Trent repeater and thought about dragging some off there, but the overs on that box were very lengthy and there would be no guarantee that they would be able to work me simplex anyway.  I accepted that I was on a loser today and aborted the activation.  I would have normally continued trying, but the rain really was awful.  The downhill but not-too-steep descent was easy and pretty quick.  We saved our lunch and flask until we had the shelter of the car's tailgate, and then drove back to Macclesfield.