Andy's Random Ramblings: Hare Cairn

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....