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Shining Tor, G/SP-004 - 559m ASL - SJ 994 737 - OS Explorer OL24 - 2 SOTA points Getting one's rucksack, water, soup, clothes, boots, coat, batteries etc
ready, even for some local activations, is time-consuming work. Doing it times
three is exhausting stuff. At least Jimmy sorted out his and Liam's clothes
which saved me a job, and also put the SOTAwatch Alerts on for me. Well, we had a good day. The main objective was to see if Jimmy could activate on 40m using SSB, QRP and SPOTlite. The answer was yes, although it didn't work out on the third summit of the day. Dusk was approaching though, there were no gaps between the contest stations, and they themselves could no longer hear our QRP as the skip started to get longer. But considering that we wanted to test these working conditions in order to have a better chance of qualifying Kisdon G/NP-026 (and others with poor VHF take-off) the next time we go there, it was good to confirm that we could either nominate a frequency (or be spotted) on SOTAwatch via SPOTlite, or answer the contest stations if an event was on. This all worked fine before 4pm. We kicked off with a cooked breakfast at the big Tesco in Macclesfield -
bacon, scrambled egg, sausage, black pudding, tomatoes, mushrooms, hash brown,
beans and pot of tea. We then parked in the usual spot just short of the Cat &
Fiddle pub on the A537 and walked to Shining Tor G/SP-004. Although the temperature was rather mild (varying between 9 and 11 degrees), the
winds were strong again all day, adding significant windchill. We were able to
get comfortable in shelter. We found this huddled at the foot of a wall on
Shining Tor. Unfortunately, the 40m dipole and fishing pole remained exposed to
the conditions, and collapsed several times during the activation! This problem
did not repeat itself on the two later summits, which are of course both a good
500 feet lower than this one. We now headed along the lanes via Bottom o'th' Oven, Forest Chapel, Wildboarclough, Wincle and Danebridge towards Gun G/SP-013. Thanks to the following stations, all worked on 40m with 5 watts:
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