Craiglich by Aboyne, vastly underrated

Despite it having been quite a hard week at work, or perhaps more because of it, the desire to get out on a hill was high, but where?   There was incoming weather, forecast, coming in from the west so not there.   North was attractive, Large OS square NJ was untouched so good for the WAB winter award.  Why not try an extra attractive one, NJ50, sought after by the WABers for the Golden Jubilee?   Within NJ50 there just happens to be a SOTA summit, GM/ES-068 with a trig TP2523, not particularly high but enough of a walk to be interesting.  In addition it had only ever been activated 6 times before.   The only problem, to get there we had to cross some pretty high hills and the weather had been iffy, with a possible ice problem.   In fact on checking the route, it was only an extra 15 minutes to go all the way to Stonehaven and up via Banchory, so that's what we did.

The weather forecast was for a total overcast all day but light winds.   As we approached Stonehaven though bits of blue sky showed and we became hopeful, this vanished as we hit thick fog around Banchory,  in addition the amount of snow in the surrounds increased dramatically

But as we pulled up in the layby it started to offer hints that we might walk out of it as we climbed

As we entered the forest track, the amount of snow became quite a surprise

And as we climbed the skies became bluer, and as the forest opened up, the most incredible views were revealed

Once we were out of the cloud, the sunlight became very pleasant even to the extent I shed my coat onto the top of my pack, despite a probable temperature of -5C!

So we got setup with the radio

How did the radio go?  Very well.  We started out on 40m around 1150 and in 20 minutes there were nearly 40 in the log before things started to tail down.   There were a couple of summit to summit qsos to Germany (Juerg DL/HB9BIN/P) and Switzerland (HB9DBM/P)vand qsos with almost all the regular people.  This was a Worked All Britain Golden Jubilee summit (NJ50) and so I was particularly pleased to get the full house of special calls GB50WAB, GB9WAB, G7WAB and G4WAB.   After the success of 40m, I thought 20m might be good, it was and it wasn't.  I only made 6 qsos but amongst those were KD1CT in NH and K4DY and N4EX in NC.  KDICT particularly surprised me by calling me with a 59 signal!  The other 20m qsos were EB1IFK, SV2HSY and a great surprise G3RDQ!   This only left 80, where Northern Ireland dominated with Esther and Ian, GI0AZA/B and Paul MI1AIB, plus Karl, 2E0FEH, down in Cornwall.

All the above with 4 watts output from and ft817 and link dipole for 40/20 (plus loading coils for 80m).

By this time it was approaching 1300 and suddenly a light breeze started and it started to feel quite cold.  (It must have been about -5C).  Time to packup and head down.  Now follows a long selection of extra photos that I couldn't bare leaving out.

It wasn't a particularly arduous walk, a mere 8km and 200m ascent but enough to build a bit of a thirst, so off to Aboyne to The Boat Inn.

Cheers!

Post script.

The weather on Sunday started a bit dreich but rapidly approaching clear spells prompted a little wind-down hill.   Berry Hillock is a steep 120m climb in around half a km and is just a few minutes drive.  It's in NO34 and has trig TP1338

A brief radio activation failed to get anyone on 40m!  I did hear a very strong Indonesian station but no-one who would hear me.   But 80m productive enough with 7 QSOS including James, M1TES, for what I think is our first qso.

It was a nice brief visit with a reminder that you don't need to drive far here to get great views.