Tuesday 17th July 2012, and still waiting for anything remotely resembling "summer".  I was away from the actual school campus, attending a conference in Wrexham about some new Edexcel specifications in mathematics.  I realised that if I set off very early, and got home rather late, I could snag a couple of cheeky activations!

   

Part 1 of the plan worked well. I was cruising along the M56 well before 7am, and had no trouble locating the junction between the A483 and A541. Why here? Well, this was the marker point for Glyndwr University (probably called Wrexham Technical College or something in a past life) where my meeting was. But I was here with a large time window to spare.

       

So it was up the A541 away from the university, through Caergwrle and up the lanes on the left to the top of the hill. I soon spotted the distinctive trig point atop Hope Mountain GW/NW-062 and pulled into the farmyard beneath it. As usual the dogs raised the alarm, and the lady of the house came to see me. As usual, she granted permission for me to access her private field in which the true summit is located, and for me to leave my car in her yard. We then had a good chat for ten minutes before I donned the pack and set off.

Waterproof trousers should have been on for this one. It wasn't raining, but I had to walk through a lot of very long, wet grass! I took care not to walk between young bullocks and their edgy mothers, so took my time to reach the trig point.  I set up the 30m dipole and set to work on the Rockmite 30. This was an easy PP3 challenge activation, with five QSOs coming within 9 minutes.  If only they could all be like this!  Despite the general cloudiness and dampness of the morning, the views over the Dee estuary were still lovely.

17-Jul-12
Battery: #1. Activation: #17
Summit: GW/NW-062. Band: 30m
Radio: Rockmite 30
Antenna: Inverted V Dipole @ 6m agl
Battery: Duracell Pro-Life
Finish Voltage at room temp: Not a clue
New DXCCs: 0
Cumulative DXCCs: 19 (9A, DL, G, GM, HA, HB, I, LA, LZ, OE, OK, OM, OZ, PA, RA, S5, SM, SP, SV)
QSOs: 5. Cumulative QSOs: 68

The timing was lovely as well, for I was still at my subject meeting 30 minutes early. A good start.