Holywell Hill, GI/SM-022 - 260m ASL - C 385 171 - OSNI Discoverer 7 - 1 SOTA point            

Thursday 6th August 2015 was the day set aside for a full day out in the hills.  Jimmy's preference was to bag several easy one pointers rather than tackle one of the big mountains deeper ino the Sperrins.  He planned for a five summit day, although difficulties on the second hill meant that we had to settle for four.  An early start had us taking the A2 into Derry, but not before an eager police officer had pulled me over and checked my breath!  The parking spot was a bit of a pull in on a country lane, actually in the Republic of Ireland.  We would be walking up to the summit which sat on the border between the Eire and Northern Ireland (UK).

The start of the transmitter access road at C376168 was marked with large metal locked gates.  Fortunately, there was a walk-through gap in the wire fence by the side, and we had already researched that pedestrian access to the summit was tolerated on an "at your own risk" basis.  The first bit of the access road climbed steeply, but thereafter it was an easy stroll to the transmitter compound.  Stiles and gates enable you to pass by either side of the compound, so you can select according to where all the cattle are congregated, which is what we did.  We reached the trig point, which isn't listed in the WAB Trig Points award list, and started to set up.

Things were fairly slow going, but stress-free with an early QSO on 6m for me.  All my 6m QSOs came courtesy of an "advertisement" by Jimmy MI0HGY/P to each of his 2m FM QSO partners.  In the end, I needed to join Jimmy on VHF to get my qualification.  Although I didn't need it either for the multiplier nor the 4-contact qualification, I wanted to test out the "safety-net" tactic of giving Jimmy my VX7R hand-portable, and working him once he had exited the activation zone on 51MHz FM.  This worked out, so I packed up my kit and followed Jimmy down to the car.  I never caught him up of course.

The next target was Clondermot Hill GI/SM-023, and that turned out to be quite a challenge.