Also, following the activation I did my usual circular walk which passes by one of my favourite trees.

Just thought I'd share it with the world - I think it's absolutely beautiful 🙂

Activated Shinning Tor G/SP-004 this morning. I come up here fairly frequently as it's pretty local but haven't activated it since October 2022.

WX on the cool side for July still but nice nonetheless.

30 meters was the band of choice today and performed okay - some signals were pretty weak though. Morse used and decided to use the straight key because why not!

Contacts into France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Sweden and Switzerland,

Thanks to all chasers that took time to call in 🙂

#sota

During the week an old Clansman PRC320 Morse key I got from a popular auction site arrived. Yesterday I gave it a clean up and fitted a replacement 3.5mm jack on it.

Got it on the air after finishing the job - I'm guessing for the first time in years. The couple of QSOs I had went well despite a few operator mistakes and I'm really happy with the way it works 😃

The plan is to use this for portable use and on activation's where the knee strap should hopefully help.

#morse #cw #morsekey

Did the weekly 2m North West #Morse net this evening from Werneth Low near home. The quickly bodged together this afternoon flowerpot antenna worked a treat. Great fun being part of it and it was wonderful seeing two different frequencies being used on 144MHz for #CW 🙂 Ops were able to have a QSO with net controller David M0WDD and then tune down for another ad-hoc QSO if they wanted.

Thanks to all ops that took part 🙂

Operating position looking towards central Manchester.

Did a steady 13km #run at Upper Derwent Valley this morning. Unfortunately the path towards Howden reservoir was shut so ended up doing a circle of Ladybower as far as the A57 bridge with detours up to Derwent dam and out to Ladybower dam from the A57 bridge itself.

Pretty place (especially this time of the year) with lots of interesting infrastructure 🙂

Returned to G/SP-001 Kinder Scout today for another go at getting the activation points after missing them by one QSO last time. This time was a success! 😊

Weather was poor - it was wet, windy and misty up there but managed to find a nook behind a rock that offered some shelter.

Thanks to @n6cta for the antenna and mic recommendation, it certainly make a lot of difference when operating. Very good audio reports on the mic quality as well 🙂

(Sorry for picture quality - lens was wet!)

Two sota summits climbed over the weekend; G/LD-004 Skiddaw and LD-020 Dale Head. Between them only one contact which was on Skiddaw on 2m FM 🫤 Skiddaw was lovely but too windy to attempt putting the mast up and Dale Head was heavy rain and wind so didn’t even bother 😬

Think I need to up my game in terms of getting a better 2m setup and something for HF that’s a little easier to setup along with possibly a shelter for the rainy days.

Enjoyed being up there and the walking nonetheless 🙂 #sota