Tom Read - click to email meBDXC ISWL WAB SOTA RSGB IOTA - see my radio page for more detailsLiam & Jimmy

Kit Hill 2010

 

Day 3 - Tuesday 27th July 2010 (part 2)

This hill was chosen to provide a suitable point from which to combine a SOTA activation with participation in the 6m UK activity contest. In the event, I'm not sure it was such a good site, but SWR was not exactly perfect on the delta loop either, so I will need to look at the antenna.

Kit Hill sign    Kit Hill monument / topograph

We parked in the summit car park on Kit Hill, leaving only a short walk and final ascent onto the chosen activating point. While much improved from Brown Willy G/DC-002 earlier, it was still a damp and gloomy night, so I set up the small tent I sometimes utilise for contest activations.

Setting up on summit    Jimmy M3EYP tries 2m FM    Still setting up!

Everything was ready a good 35 minutes before the contest start time, but I wasn't happy with the SWR on 6m. Fiddling around, I found that the best SWR reading was on 12m! A couple of stations were heard CQing on 24MHz, so I tried to answer them. They both called me in first time, and easy contacts were had with RA2FF (Kaliningrad) and AO5GL (Spain).

Kit Hill summit    Tom M1EYP & 6m delta loop

The next hour and a half was dismal as we tried, and failed to make a single contact in the contest on 6m. In the end I set trusty old 40m up in order that we get the SOTA activation even if not a contest entry. Jimmy got his quota of 4 on 40m SSB, before I added 1 x 40m SSB and 4 x 40m CW to my two earlier 12m CW contacts.

Tower on Kit Hill    Jimmy M3EYP

It wasn't the evening we'd had in mind, but at least, I had still qualified the summit in LESS time (2 hours and 5 minutes) than it had taken me in 2004 (2 hours 28 minutes)!  Late nights back at the tent were becoming the norm and poor Craig didn't know what had hit him - and I realised that Jimmy and Liam have unusually high stamina levels. Craig was taking to having a sleep on every car journey, and taking a nap on every summit as well!  We would have a well-deserved day off from hiking the following day, and hit the beach instead!

 

RA2FF

12m

CW

T

AO5GL

12m

CW

T

ON3WAB

40m

SSB

J, T

HA7UG

40m

SSB

J

Z35F

40m

SSB

J

G4OOE

40m

SSB

J

G4OOE

40m

CW

T

DL6KVA

40m

CW

T

HB9BQU

40m

CW

T

Z35F

40m

CW

T