Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Graystones

It's difficult to resist the lure of a bright, sunny day calling you to the hills. It was cold, but not windy - ideal weather for walking. I decided to climb Graystones, a not very often visited Wainwright peak, LDW-187 in the Wainwrights On The Air list.

This modest hill should have been an easy walk, but I took a wrong turn in the network of forest roads and ended up having to climb a couple of hundred feet at a 45 degree incline to reach the top. That got the pulse rate going I can tell you. Who says ham radio isn't a healthy sport?

I took the unusual step for me of announcing my intention on the WOTA web site, but I guess everyone was busy or at work and for a time it looked as if this was going to be a null activation. Then I was heard by George G6AGZ/M heading west on the A66, to great relief. George expressed his opinion that I must be raving mad to be out on the hills in this weather. I told him it's sunny, the sky is blue, it's crisp but not cold and I have just eaten a packed lunch whilst admiring a glorious view. Who's crazy?

I was disappointed not to work anyone who was actively collecting Wainwright summits. I put calls through several repeaters and repeatedly called on the FM calling frequency. When I say VHF is dead in this part of the world I mean dead. I was literally pushing the off button on the TH-F7E to turn it off before packing up when I heard a signal. I switched on again and it was Colin, M6XSD. We had a contact and he earned his point for working this rarely activated hill. Job done, and a nice walk into the bargain.

1 comment:

Paul Stam PAØK said...

Hello Julian, what a great sight... beautiful. Well, as I said before, were is all the activity gone on VHF? Also here in the Netherlands. Sometimes I hear someone, most of the a mobile station via a repeater. When they go to work or come from work. In the seventies and eighties there was so much activity on VHF that there was sometimes no free channel available. Also SSB and CW, now the band seems to be completely dead. 73 Paul