Hare Cairn - Low hanging fruit!

After the last two weeks with over 20 km walks and up to 700m of ascent, something a little less energetic was called for.  This, coupled with the expected poor weather made for a choice of Hare Cairn, GM/ES063,  WAB NO26 and trig TP3618.

This is an easy walk starting from the car park at the dam, going north along the west bank of the reservoir and cutting through the wood before taking a left turn to climb to the summit.   It's only 220m ascent but you get it all in one go in about 500m so it's a bit of a stiff climb!

Starting out from the dam we carefully heeded the warnings about the thin ice (very thin...), and fought off the urge to take a dip too.

As we set off along the reservoir a light rain started, more of a mizzle

which by the time we got to the woods at the north end of the reservoir was looking quite grim

So we cut up into the woods for a bit of shelter and I took advantage to change gear to something more waterproof

which had an immediate and miraculous effect on the weather!

And by the time we popped out the other side of the wood, we couldn't believe it was the same day.

And as we climbed the views to the north opened up,  note the angle of the slope....

Backwater reservoir started looking very pretty





it even had a canoeist on it!

And here follows the usual mountain porn collection, because it all looked so pretty and I couldn't decide which ones to leave out.   The eagle eyed will spot Lochnagar, Glas Maol and surroundings.  Sadly I missed getting a photo of the Golden Eagle!  (second time we've seen one here)

At last  the trig hove into view and we found a) the top was very wet!  and b) that it was very very sheltered on the way up!  (But not here!)

We got the aerial up attached to a handy ancient fence post.

Not that it stayed there all the time, both collapsing into itself and also blowing over!

So how did the radio go?

I'd made up an LC network to tune the outer braid of the coax on 80m..  I ran out a long counterpoise and tuned it up, bingo, not only 1:1 swr but I could hear people.

Only problem was that no-one could hear me.

Ok, give up, go down to 40m and find a small hole, after about 15 minutes I found 7190, started cqing and due to that rare luxury of having a mobile signal was able to self spot.!

Thanks to those who came down from 80m, straight away, I hadn't realised how big a deal the WAB decade in 2 days was so I really appreciate it.  First was Ken g0fex, and then Geoff g0gwy, followed by Esther and Ian gi0az<a/b>, Dan sm6cnx and Dave g4iar.  Some of the SOTA regulars found me too, Don g0rql, Frans pa0ina and Rod m0jla,  and of course Pedro ea2ckx who always makes the impossible path from Spain at that time of day!  After a few more we decided to flick to 20m and started off with an s2s with ec2ag/p  and then having settled on a frequency worked a number of very well known calls including Manuel ea2dt and Marius sp9amh.   Very pleased to be called by George, N1GB for a very nice 54 report for my 4 watts from Vermont.   20m was drying up so we tried 80m again,  this time managing qsos with g7bga, g0gwy and mm3pdm/p!   It was only then that I realised I'd forgotten to reattach the counterpoise...  How did this work?


Looking back over the pictures, I was thinking how nice and summery it all looked,  no-one would believe that my large vango rucksack nearly blew away!  So here's a couple of video segments so you get a better idea of what it really was like!!

It was declared that by this stage, I was starting to turn a wee bit blue....   It might have been a lot milder than a usual winters day, but not that mild....

Time to head down

And by the time we were down at Backwater, the day was unrecognisable!!

Another fine jaunt!

Battock Again - right route this time

Last week we had thought about doing Mount Battock,  looked at the weather forecast and thought again.   Judging by the amount of remaining snow, despite the heavy thaw, we decided well!

Same route as last year, although this year we actually walked the route we'd planned, due to knowing the large number of unmarked tracks, some of which (the one we last used) don't go where you'd want to.

Mount Battock is 778m high, which, with a starting point at about 150m, gives a good enough ascent, but the actual ascent walked is more like 700m over a round trip of 18km...  A reasonable day out.   The radio aspect gives SOTA summit GM/ES-032, WAB N059 and trig point   (or as we call it, aerial support)  TP 0677.

The route starts at the phone box,  past mill of Aucheen

up to Blackcraigs, Blackhills, 

follow the unmarked path to the the T junction and FFS avoid the unmarked path to the summit of Allrey which will leave you with horrible cross country to regain the summit but at the right angle bend (actually a T) go right to follow the nearly northerly track to Wester Cairn.   At this point the weather wasn't too bad with clouds above summit level, pretty much what we expected.

This is where things started going downhill. 

 The light mizzle turned into definite rain and we had to start taking protective measures

Even so, there were some earie occasional views beyond our 100m range to make us think that things might pan out how the Met Office had said, "things can only get better".  It was around about this point that Ian pointed out to me that despite having been going for nearly an hour we still had 400m of ascent to do...   Thanks...

And so I remained cheerful, the proper swearing would have to wait till later.

From Wester Cairn, things started to get a lot snowier,  vindicating our decision not to walk this last week

Walking through snow was getting a bit tedious, but unfortunately it was between where we were and where we wanted to be!

At last the summit!  I was getting a bit fed up with that.

And just after we got there, there were a few clear patches, looks like the weather forecast was right?

And at last we got setup for the radio.

There was no mobile signal whatsoever since long before we had left the car.  But not to worry, we got the radio setup and went straight to 7.160,  and there was someone keeping the frequency warm.  I thought a quick call would alert the pack.  Nope.  I just couldn't break in and just had to wait until they'd finished, a bit of a loss of 20 minutes, which is quite precious time at 800m above sea level, but a couple of calls on the backup frequency 7.118 yielded nothing so no-one waiting there.

At last the frequency became clear and a couple of calls proved that the reception committee had been there all along, just swamped,  Ken G0fex was first followed quickly by 2e0kvj, g4iar, g7bga, m3feh and then it got busy!  A further 22 in 15 minutes with many well kent calls, including g0rql, ei9glb (HUGE signal), g8add, m0ntc, and Pedro ea2ckx who is always a surprise on 40m at that time of day.  An S2S with hb9bin/p was great.   By 1315 40m seemed to dry up so I thought it time to try 20m, with the intention of coming back to 40m or even to 80m to try out the new ATU.

After 15 minutes I was getting nowhere until I had a nice 59+ chat with oe9dai at a ski resort in Voralberg.  Alexander spotted me on the dx cluster yet it was still hard going.  I qsyed to 14285 to pick up yo8ssq/p and yo8sbr/p for S2S and then quickly came back to 14310 after trying an "advert" on 14285.   Still nothing.  But then I heard w1ow asking someone to standby so he could work the sota!   Neat!  Bill was 58 and gave me 55, so despite the struggle on 20m  I got an s2s and the USA.

spot the Op!

The eagle eyed will have spotted something in the sequence above.  First an improvement in the weather, briefly.  That the aerial mast was rather bowed over in the wind, and not very high.  And then that weather conditions seemed to be going downhill,  and then the photos stopped, and then the weather went really downhill.   The rain started,  not the irritating mizzle from earlier, but real proper COLD rain (tending towards the more crystalline variety).  It started to get very very miserable.  We just had to give up and get out.   It was a very "stuff it in" kind of pack - everything was soaked anyway and I was glad I already had full waterproofs on to keep warm from the wind.  It was too bad to capture the packup, but removed gloves to catch the next 3,  for the record!!

A bit more than an hour after it had begun,  we popped out from under the clag

Maybe it was stopping!!!

And then even more quickly than it had come on, we came out from under, what must have been a much more active cold front than predicted

Where we'd come from!

where we're going to!

Nearly home!

The car is just after that bridge,  Ahhhh