Let me out, I've got cabin fever!!

It had rained all Saturday and half of Sunday.   But keenly following the rain radar it really looked like it was passing over.  This time from East to West, so would it be possible to get out???

Not far away, (40 minutes drive) just north west of Kirriemuir lies a nice patch of hills between Glens Uig, Prosen and Quharity,  Cat Law is easily accessible starting from Auldallan and has a track pretty much to the top.  In radio terms it's GM/ES-044, WAB NO36, Trig TP2045, in sanity terms it was a lifesaver after a weekend of rain.

The weather looked promising as we started up, looking east.

You'd think the old man had been cooped up for a year though

But we got to the top

and fixed the mast to the trig,

the wind was a bit stronger up there and I regretted not untangling the dipole first

Eventually I caught the bit of wire and managed to get a radio station going

And then it got difficult! Mobile signal on here for self spotting is weird, one minute it's there, one minute it isn't.   We could hear a WAB net going on 80m but couldn't get heard with 4watts.  The equipment is just an ft817,  7AH SLAB and a link dipole.  I tried calling on 40m on the frequency that I'd alerted beforehand that we would use but no-one was listening for us - I am increasingly convinced that the art of "looking for someone on the radio" is gone,  many people now just sit looking on the internet for spots and jumping to that frequency.  No spot - no jump.  Heaven knows, in the rain of Sunday morning I'd tried that myself from home (I'm seldom on the radio from home preferring to be on a hill), how easy it was, like painting by numbers, except I'd done it on cw (morse) just for a bit of variety and because I'd done no morse for weeks!, catching Andy F/HB9JOE/p in the Vosges and a few others.

Anyway, eventually I did manage to make it known I was there and got a few in the log.  Radio conditions were very difficult following a big solar event and we only managed 5 qsos on 40m.   Then we managed to find out that the Northern Irish contingent were qrv on 80m and out again came my new secret weapon for the second time.

The loading coils fits in at the jumper for 20/40m and gives a very good match over a narrow part of 80m.  And again I was amazed when Esther gi0aza/p (and Ian azb) on gi/mm-012 came straight back to my call.

After that we had a brief go on 20m but after 3 qsos, sp9amh, oe7fmh, and dj2mx it was clear we were getting nowhere and with clearly incoming weather decided enough was enough.

The wind was getting quite strong up there:



And looking East things were starting to look grim so we made a quick pack and fled.   At least my water bottle didn't freeze as it had on my first visit to this hill, albeit a little later in the year!

As we headed down the hill, looking west the views were pretty stunning, in this shot you can see GM/ES-35, 43, 56, 58, 63 and 64, plus?!

We were hoping for a lamb barbecue on return, but Ian couldn't run fast enough

thankfully the chops were in the fridge already.