Andy's Random Ramblings

That rare event this summer, a guaranteed sunny day had us reaching for the map, where can we get to, have a nice walk and then get back in time for a good barbecue! Glen Isla is just a 50 minute drive so seemed to fit the bill and Mealna Letter (also called Duchray hill) fitted the bill and is one we haven't done for quite a while. It's a SOTA GM/ES043, WAB NO16 and also a flora fauna being in the Cairngorms national park so GMFF0001.

It's a nice walk starting out at the east end of the map below at 300m, heading north west up Glen Beanie until you reach the saddle or bealach at 440m, thence you turn south south west and grit your teeth as the remaining 260m happens in a km or less with some quite steep sections. So, it's a mere 400m total in a round trip of 12km so a pleasant little walk.

Leaving the car it seemed a nice day and the gentle start up Glen Beanie is always pleasant with loads of butterflies to see and pleasantly warm

At the saddle you get nice views of Loch Beanie and a proper look at the hill and the steep bit!

The steep bit doesn't look actually that bad on the ones of us going up

But when you come to look at one of the ones, going down, it gives a better idea

Still, we survived

And even managed to get setup to do a bit of radio

Considering you can't get anyone anymore, it was pretty ok. Many of the usual culprits are in the log, as usual. g7lmf, g0rql, ea2ckx, g0gwy,g0fex, m3feh, g4iar, g4sqa, dl3hxx, pa0b, pa0ina plus a few more on 40m. 20m yielded no USA this time but an s2s with hb9sqm/p, and frequent callers hb9agh, Marius sp9amh, oe7fmh, eu2mm, sa4blm, Manuel ea2dt, hb9mkv, a couple of FF park to park contacts and a few others. A trip to 2m gained Robin gm7pkt/p on gm/es033 but we completely failed with gi0aza&b in the Mourne mountains despite the GI beacon being quite a good signal. We'd waited up there especially expecting it to be easy. Ian, my walking assistant and carrier of the "heavy thing" comments that the GI contingent should get up and set off earlier (like we do) so we dont have to wait, hint hint. (Not that he was particularly inconvenienced as he went to sleep and got sunburn)

One of the reasons why the GI signals weren't really there on VHF is that this lot is in the way:

Still, it's a nice enough spot to spend a couple of hours and it looked quite nice back towards home for that promised barbecue

There were nice views of last weeks jaunt up Mount Blair ES045 just to the south

Even our hill looked quite nice as we headed down, but I was happy enough to call it a day knowing that there was a load of diced pork for kebabs marinading in the fridge in thyme lemon juice and olive oil.

The kebabs were amazing.

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!