Thursday 21st April 2011 - Selworthy Beacon G/SC-005

Selworthy Beacon is one of the easiest SOTA summits ever, and out of all those that lie in national parks, there can barely be a more trivial approach. I had promised Liam his daytrip to Minehead this day, so intended activating this summit in the afternoon. It could either be a long "play radio" type activation, or we could have sneaked Will's Neck G/SC-002 in as well. In the end, it was the former option that took place.

       

First port of call in Minehead was the Oggy Shop in the town centre, or the Oggy Oggy Pasty Company to give it its full name. Here we had freshly baked hot pasties for breakfast, together with our choice of beverage - tea for Jimmy, juice for Liam and coffee for me.  Then we walked onto the front to the arcades, another treat for Liam. As usual, he thrashed me at the driving games, but I thrashed Jimmy at the air hockey. After playing various 10p machines and other games, we had a stack of tickets, which we gave to Liam to exchange for model cars and chewy sweets at the counter.

Next stop was the beach. Yes, the beach, in April! It was another beautiful hot sunny day, blue skies and about 25 degrees. Definitely beach weather. Except for the sea that is! Jimmy remained on the sand, basking in the sunshine, but Liam and I went for a swim. The air temperature might not have been typical for April, but the sea temperature was! We swam for about ten minutes, but that was the limit.

After returning to the Oggy Shop for lunch, it was time to head out of town, uphill, and to Selworthy Beacon. We parked a the side of the track, between the road and the sign which said "Strictly no vehicles beyond this point". It was only a fairly flat five minute walk to the top from there anyway.  Liam baggsed himself the shadow of the trig point to sit in and play on his DS, while Jimmy and I set up our aerials. It was a slow-going 8 QSOs for Jimmy on 2m FM, but I was here to play and had carried three antennae with me. First up was the MM12 for some fun on 24MHz. Despite hearing a CQ from YB0AKM with a massive 599 signal, my replies were not heard. I did work four Russians, one English (very close) and a station from Cyprus though.

   

       

I replaced the MM12 with the MM20 and settled down for a long run on 14MHz CW - 51 QSOs in 49 minutes. The WFF reference for Exmoor of GFF-006 was utilised to maintain interest in my operation when things started to tail off. Finally, I put the 40m dipole up. I worked 18 SOTA chasers on 7.031MHz CW, before switching to 21MHz CW and offering the WFF again. This brought a further 15 contacts, including nice DX in the form of VE3, EA8 and TA. Finally, it was back on 40m CW to work another 15 SOTA chasers.

The final total for me was 105 contacts. During his 2m activation, Jimmy had worked Peter G3TJE, who had kindly invited us round to his home QTH in Brent Knoll for a drink and a bite to eat. When we arrived, a wonderful spread of cheese, pate, bread, salad, olives, quiche etc awaited, nicely accompanied by a glass of local farm cider. We spent a most enjoyable couple of hours with Peter chatting about amateur radio matters amongst other things, and enjoying the fine spread. Very many thanks to Peter.

   

It was only a short drive from Brent Knoll to Cheddar, but I was tired by then so took it nice and easy. Like the previous night, getting into bed was rather enjoyable!  The next day was originally scheduled to be our last, with an activation of Dundry Down G/SC-010 thrown in.  Many thanks to the following stations: