Easter Sunday 20th April 2014 - Mynydd y Betws GW/SW-028

The third activation of Easter day and 11th of the South Wales tour thus far. We had been aware for a couple of days that poor weather was expected to come in by the afternoon, so we set aside a couple of trivial hills for the second half of Sunday. For Mynydd y Betws, the road passes over the hill at virtually summit height. 

Upon arriving at the parking spot, it was still raining heavily, but we had collected some lunch items from a shop in a local village. We turned on the 2m set in the car and sat eating our sandwiches and pasties. "CQ SOTA" came out of the extension speaker of the FT-8800 mobile rig, which prompted both Jimmy and I to work GW0JZE/P who was activating Crugiau Merched GW/MW-021.

Not too long later, the rain stopped and the skies started looking a little brighter. Nonetheless, Liam elected to remain in the car, while Jimmy and I made our way the 200 yards or so across the tussocky grass to a slightly raised mound that we decided was effectively the summit. This is the earthwork marked as "Penlle'r Castell" on the OS 1:25000 map. Around the mound was a ditch, which offered some relative shelter, so we set our stations such that we could make use of this.

I was off to a flyer on this one, working YO8BFC almost immediately on 12m CW. However, that was to be my one and only contact on 24MHz, and after twelve minutes of unanswered CQing, I gave up and went down to 40m. Jimmy was fnding things slow going on 2m FM, but in 19 minutes of operating he had secured his four contacts. Moving to 40m CW proved fruitful for me, with five UK chasers going straight into the log in just two minutes of operation!  The rain restarted as we were walking back to the car, so this would appear to have been a perfectly timed activation! The option for a fourth summit for a third consecutive day remained, so we drove to Mynydd Uchaf GW/SW-031.