Largo Law, I always forget how steep it is!

The weather forecast was pretty rank for everywhere except South East Fife, so that's the direction we headed.  Largo Law is a pretty little hill, that always takes us by surprise in the brutality of it's ascent...

You start from the car park by the school at Upper Largo, to Chesterstone farm and then straight up via the false summit with a total ascent of 250m in a bit over a km and half.  Nothing!

The radio details are SOTA GM/SS-259, WAB NO40 and Trig TP4364.

Despite the great forecast from our Met Office, that the rain would have departed by 10AM here, we sat in the car around noon with it peeing down.  Mr Swift who is here primarily for the walking (and terribly useful as "carrier of the heavy thing") did the unthinkable.  He said  "Isn't there some GMFF near he we could go and activate instead from the car?"...

Eventually the rain did stop(ish) and nearer 1pm we set off.

Initially it wasn't so bad, although very muggy

we soon remembered about the angle of this hill

And as we climbed, it started to get very murky

And continued in that vein until we got setup on the top.

Largo Law is famous for the amazing views

We could barely see the sheep...

The radio part worked out ok, helped by the fact that there was good mobile and data signal for spotting and setting up skeds.   I started on 40m and was surprised by the first call from la1ena,  I don't often work Norway from SOTA.   Mike g6tuh was his usual 59+ from Sussex as were Ken and Christine, gm0axy and gm4ymm from Edinburgh,  we could probably see them.  Err, thinking on it, maybe not...  Then started a good run of SOTA and WAB regulars, including g0fex, pa7zee, mw0xot, g0rql, g0vwp, g6wrw, g4rmd, and of course Pedro ea2ckx!  Just as we were about to change the links, there was an s2s with Mikey 2e0yyy/p who was using his Antron 99 - an 11m aerial - on 40m!  55 both ways!

With the summit well qualified we tried 20m and started by picking off 3 more s2s qsos with eb2gkk/1, iu2ijw/p and ea2if/p, before settling down to a short run of regulars including ok1sde, oe6gnd and oh3gz, with a surprise call from ea6/on7dq/p for another s2s from the Balearic islands.  As the propagation changed, a station on our frequency became much stronger and turned out to be the net controller for some US net,  from Texas!  Couldn't hear us of course...  It had been a good run, time for my sandwich and some coffee.  After a few minutes, as we sat listening to the US stations calling in, there was a familiar voice calling for me to listen 5hf!,   ea2dt had seen the spot and chanced we might be there despite the frequency being swamped in Spain.  We qsy'd 14305 and worked Manuel to tie off 20m!

I had my dads old hb9cv with me and was determined to have another go at 2m after last weeks success and immediately heard Steve mm0xpz/p for another s2s at 125km.  After working a local mobile I saw on the facebook chat that Esther gi0aza had been hearing me from Northern Ireland on 20m!  So qsy'd back to try.  While I could hear Esther giving my report 3/3  I'd faded down too much for her to hear my reciprocal report :-(  But I did then get called by g1foa/p in Kent for another s2s!  Es?  20m clearly wasn't going to work to get Esther, but Karl m3feh was waiting patiently on 40m for me so we went there and completed easily.  And then who should call, but gi0aza to exchange 59 both ways - and then promptly faded out (after we had completed).  So  a good day, only 31 qsos but of those 7 were summit to summit.   It did rain quite heavily for some of the time, my log is a wee bit crinkly now, but mostly legible!

And, the weather started to improve!

Well, at least where we were, looking west towards the Lomond hills made us feel vindicated in staying East.

Looking East things were much better!

So, it was time to head down, not a humungous walk, but enough for a good leg stretch

And damn punishing on that steep bit!

To the extent that my prize was the 5 dish takeaway buffet from the Shehzad (well, not all mine...)

Auchenfree hill - supposed to be a gentle restart!

It was going to be a gentle reintroduction.  Last week I was still not up to a proper walk.   Even skiing had been as "efficient as possible".   Flu in January followed by Shingles at the end of march was a generally bad idea and I'm still feeling it.


The map didn't look too hard, start at the car park at the Loch Turret damn. Go to the head of the loch, follow the path to the top of Auchenfree and back.   No-one expected the seductive ridge.  Somehow we ended up doing 18km with over 600m ascent.

It was, as we say,  "A braw day"!  And we got started around 10AM, the next sequence follows us to the head of the loch,  what more can i say than it was very pretty

Around about the head of the loch,  I succumbed to unzipping my Craghoppers detachable legs,  as they wouldn't get past my boots and I was way too lazy to remove those, they became "scrunchies" at the bottom of my legs.  At times it's handy to "not give a damn"

From the head of the loch you backtrack on yourself and for the next nearly 2 km you climb over 400m,  it's pretty much a grit the teeth and get on with it job

And suddenly Loch Turret seems a long way below you.  From the highest point you break away North over easy moorland.

With spectacular views of the Ben Lawers/Tarmachan ridge opening up

The Cairn isn't quite the highest place, but at just 4m below the top and offering a bit of shelter from the north east wind it was quite welcome.

As well as giving somewhere to wedge the aerial pole

From here looking northwest you can still see some significant snow on the highest peaks.

I have a conundrum.  If I take off my (prescription) sunglasses I can't see anything, it's too bright.  If I leave them on, I can't read anything on the radio or the log.

Here I am talking to Sylvia OE5YYN/P and Mario OE5MKE/P on a summit in Austria.

I'd been wondering how the radio bit would go.  While I'd been lain up I'd been hearing of wailing and gnashing of teeth about how bad things had got (due to the declining sunspot cycle).

Certainly when I started off on 40m grabbing a couple of Flora Fauna stations I found it looked pretty bad.  But I'd alerted that I would be on 7.118 at 1200z so gave it a go, pleading for any shack sloths to come and find me.   And at 1204 there was Steve g4hpe (hardly a sloth!) at 59+,  Steve put the word out and over the next 25 minutes managed 18 qsos including many well kent calls, m3feh, g0fex, g8add, pa0ina, g4iar, g0rql, ei9glb, g0gwy,g7afm,g0fvh, (a predominance of WAB chasers rather than SOTA, )  plus ea2ckx, Pedro who always makes the impossible trip and two s2s with dl/hb9bin/p and ei3ka/p.  Sadly I failed with Esther gi0aza,  I could hear her but the power difference was too great for the poor propogation that way.  I had fitful (tropospheric?) phone data and that failed when I tried to setup a vhf try.  

I had taken the hb9cv for 2m with me and did give this a go with much surprise.  I found 2m FM busy and at one point was in a 4 way s2s on 145.4 with mm0xpz/p, mm0glm/p, and gm7pkt/p plus a few others at good distances (maybe 140km?).

I had alerted for 20m so thought I should give it a go, glad I did!!

Second qso was ka1r in Mass followed immediately by S2S with Peter oe5aul/p and Sylvia oe5yyn/p plus Mario oe5mke/p who they were introducing to SOTA,  I was pleased to work you Mario!

Following on I was pleased also to talk to some more familiar voices, ok1sde, oe6gnd,9a7w, sa4blm, ok1dvm, hb9cga and particularly Manuel ea2dt who I speak to from most summits.  And at the end was a second contact to the US with George N1GB in Vermont!  These US guys must have awfully good ears to hear my 4Watts at that time of day.

It was time to start heading down, unusually it wasn't the cold that forced us away, more the thought of the Pork roast that would be happening real soon now...

Some stupid fool thought it would be a good idea to go back along the ridge rather than taking the easy way.  Somehow someone slipped in another couple of 100m ascents...

But it would have been a shame to miss out on the panoramic views across the plain to Crieff

and Perth

and the views from along the ridge.

even though the track (sic) became a bit hard going.

But eventually we made it back down to the low path,  would you believe there is 400m between the path and the ridge.

And yes, the pork roast was fantastic.