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...)
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