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G4OBK SOTA Activation Kinder Scout 10th May 2006 (Accompanied by G4YSS)
 (Thanks to Roy Clayton G4SSH of SSEG for allowing this reproduction)
Before I got into SOTA in 2005, I admired the efforts of John Earnshaw, G4YSS. John was operating amateur radio from Summits long before SOTA
was conceived. He got into SOTA from the start, when the necessary four contacts needed to qualify a summit were sometimes hard to find. That's partly
why he is now the highest scoring English SOTA activator, having activated from 224 Summits.
John is also a user of the Scarborough Special Events Group callsign, GX0OOO/P. I thought I could pick up on John's experience as a leading SOTA activator by inviting him to accompany me on an activation of the highest Marilyn on the Southern Pennines, SP-001 Kinder Scout. John has been using a GPS since 1998 so the trip also enabled John to teach me how to use a GPS properly. We left North Yorkshire at 6.30 am arriving at a fairly convenient grass verge parking area at SK 1033 8519. There is room for one car here to be safely parked if you get well into the hedge. There is much more space to park further back under the railway bridge at SK 1099 8474. We started walking just after 10.00 am arriving at the trig point via Jacob's ladder at 11.19 am. The route had been kindly supplied to us by Ian G7KXV and is part of the well known Pennine Way. The weather was sunny and warm and I was soon down to my T-shirt. Long before John G4YSS got into SOTA (and GPS navigation) he enjoyed the hobby of finding aircraft wrecks, and Kinder has a few that can be located. From his records John picked out five of these, the idea being that we would use our GPS gear to locate them. We headed north from the trig point, on the plateau that is Kinder Scout. Amazingly, with the help of the GPS using GO-TO mode, we walked straight to the site within 15 minutes. This was located under some rocks slightly east of The Pennine Way, at SK 07800 87499 (see photo). The aircraft had crashed in 1942 at a height of 2000 feet above sea level.
The location of the wreck was within 25m of the highest point on Kinder, so after enjoying my picnic I set up my HF station, leaving John to wander off to the highest possible point to operate on 2m. I used an FT-817, SOTA pole supporting a 40m doublet antenna with 4:1 balun, and an LDG auto ATU. Eleven HF contacts were made:
After our session on the radio satisfying the deserving SOTA chasers we packed up and set off across the top of the moor. Conditions were extremely dry, allowing us to walk in the channels that have been created naturally amongst the peat ground to drain the water off the moor. The plan now was more GPS training and an attempt to find the highest point on the plateau. The top of the hill stretches as far as the eye can see, so a SOTA activation could take place over a very wide area, and still meet the criteria of being within 25m of the top. At the cairn at SK 08677 87548 we believe we found the top! After a short break and a swig of water we targeted more aircraft wrecks. Using the GPS again we found two, a Harvard and an Anson near the Cloughs at SK 0890 8664. These two wrecks were on the moor on our way down the steep hillside, off any paths, via the shortest route. We returned to the vehicle by late afternoon and made our way through Derbyshire to Stocksbridge, joining the M1 for our journey back to North Yorkshire. A thoroughly enjoyable SOTA activation and an extremely useful navigational exercise by John G4YSS on the use of a GPS. 
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