The wind early on Thursday 24th January 2008 was uncomfortable, and at 45 degrees to the topograph, so that was no use for shelter. I had to select a new operating position down in the heather to one side of the final approach path. Setting up was made a little easier due to the fact that the wind was in the direction of the third guy line, and acted as a resolving vector - ie it all stood up with just the pole and the two dipole legs. I did peg out the third guy to protect against a momentary lapse in the wind, but I think it was unnecessary.

Again, my signals were refracted into Central Europe, and my 8 contacts were made up of OK (2), OE (2), HA, OM and DL (2). Good fun and good practice. I enjoyed it this morning. I was cutting it fine by the time I had packed up, so I didn't call on 2m.

Thank you for the contacts and the spot.

Friday 1st February 2008:  The 6am alarm went off with a blast of BBC Radio 4 on 93.7MHz FM. The next thing I heard was the patter of rain on the bedroom window. Dismay. Then I noticed I was feeling particularly tired, and an extra hour, horizontally polarised in my bed momentarily appealed.  Fortunately, my brain gathered a little more consciousness, and became more able to perform rational thinking. It advised me that I didn't have to miss out on my daily exercise regime; there was always the option of chucking on the waterproofs and doing a low effort 2mFMHHRD activation. In fact it told me that I could just go for a walk and to heck with the activation, but I soon dismissed that ridiculous idea!

Driving out through Gawsworth and North Rode, the precipitation couldn't decide whether it wanted to be blizzard, gentle snow, sleet, drizzle or rain. It tried everything, before settling on none of the above (ie dry) by the time I got to Cloudside.

While my head felt tired and groggy, my legs and lungs didn't, and the restored fitness regime seems to be working. I noticed while doing daily visits to SP-015 last year that it was doing more for my physical consition than the considerably more boring, considerably more expensive and significantly more pretentious gym. Before Christmas I quit my gym membership along with a New Year's resolution to ascend The Cloud daily - unless I was doing some other exercise, like football, squash or a proper activation! The resolution has made it into the second month of the year, and hope remains it can be as successful as last year's - which was to reach sufficient competence in CW to undertake an activation.

I reach the summit without needing to flick on the headtorch, a sure sign that dawn is, as expected, two minutes earlier each day. I was greet by an evil blast of very cold wind. My hands froze almost instantly, and I regretted copping out of an HF activation that could have allowed me to stay sheltered. Standing with my back to the wind meant that my head was directly between the rubber duck and anyone that was likely to hear me. Gingerly, I turned slightly to the left to give my VX-7R a partial view of the North-West.

Just two stations were raised, both of them mobile and on the way to work. But it was another activation (number 535) and another daily exercise completed. I just don't tire of this hill. It is a lovely place to emerge on top of and view the lights of the surrounding towns at dawn or dusk.  Thanks to the following stations, both worked on 2m FM with 5 watts:
 

On Sunday 3rd February 2008, it was Liam and me again. Jimmy was marching in Manchester with Air Cadets, and Marianne was sleeping between night-shifts. We had been out at the MIDCARS 'Radio Active' show at Nantwich, meeting up with a few friends and picking up some adaptors, ferrite beads and such.

The approach to the usual Cloudside parking spot was now passable, so it was the usual ascent route onto the summit. The cold wind was showing no sign of diminishing, so we took shelter against some rocks on the north end of the summit. Activity was again low, with just three stations worked on 2m FM:

On Saturday 9th February 2008, I got up at the usual 6am and within 20 minutes was on the road. I wanted to do one this morning in order to get back in the 40 CW groove, and to complete what would be 20 consecutive daily activations of The Cloud G/SP-015.

Upon setting up, I realised that the CQWW RTTY was in full swing, and the usual QRG of 7.032 was unusable. However, a good clear spot at 7.023 was found, so I self-spotted on here. The result was a nice run of 11 contacts (6 DXCCs - DL, HA, G, OK, OH, HB) on 40m CW. After packing up I called on 2m FM to work MDRS member Andy G1DDU, and Barry 2E0PXW/M.

I heard Terry G0VHS from down near Weymouth nice and strong on 145.475MHz and realised there was a lift on. Maybe I shouldn't have done HF after all; it would have been a perfect opportunity to put the new SB270 through its paces!  Thanks to the following stations, all worked using 5 watts:

I decided to put the 80m system through its paces again on Saturday morning, 15th March 2008.  All good, with lots of contacts on 3.557MHz CW, then plenty on 3.660MHz SSB. A fair bit of interest on 2m FM after that too, including S2S with Clive M1YAM/P on Ingleborough G/NP-005. Operating from 0834 until 1016, 39 contacts in total. Mild, in cloud, but dry.

Summary:
80m CW: 18 QSOs, 5 DXCCs - G, GW, F, DL, ON
80m SSB: 10 QSOs, 2 DXCCs - G, GW
2m FM : 11 QSOs, 1 DXCC - G!

A knock at the door at 9.50pm on Saturday (10th May 2008) evening, came ten minutes earlier than expected. I gobbled down a final mouthfull of my curry take-away and downed my half-glass of White Zindafel. It was Sean, known to most as 2E0BAX, but now proudly sporting his new full callsign M0GIA. The event was an across-midnight activation of The Cloud G/SP-015, including testing a top-band antenna.

I loaded my personal contributions to the kit - a SOTA pole, guying kit and pegs, plus cereal bars, torch and 2m handheld, into Sean's car boot along with my coat and fleece. We then drove back across town to collect Greg 2E0RXX to complete the expedition team.  In all the rush, I had forgotten to do one thing - post an alert onto SOTAwatch. I tried to rectify this by using SPOTlite, which seemed to be a struggle in patchy Vodafone coverage along the Macc-Leek road. However, I then discovered that it was all working well, and I had sent my spot four times!

Sean led the march up the steps from Cloudside, and set a punishing pace. Certainly for me, who had been up since 6am and had already done a 9 mile circular over Whernside G/NP-004 that day. Or perhaps Sean was exacting revenge for the time Jimmy M3EYP and I deliberately set a demanding pace up The Old Man of Coniston G/LD-013 last year!

Torchlight was useful on the ascent, but not essential, there being a bright crescent moon in the sky. Upon reaching the summit, Greg set up his homebrew 3-element beam for 2m, while Sean and I got the 160m aerial up. But would it work?  After an initial struggle, Sean managed to get the aerial tuned using the ATU we had brought up in a carrier bag! A QSO on 1.960MHz was broken into, and while starting weakly and with difficulty, a little more tuning enabled both Sean and I to make contact. Sean was clearly delighted that his aerial was working.

                                                     

We then found a net of very strong stations on 1.933MHz, and again Sean broke himself into the group. With this, Sean, Greg and myself all made contacts with stations from the Isle of Wight to Malin Head (EI, most northerly point of Ireland - more north than any part of GI!) - and one in Biddulph Moor, a village we could actually see from our summit!  Excellent. Sean's 160m quarter-wave antenna had worked a treat, and he was eagerly anticipating using it on his forthcoming Piel Island DXpedition.  Sean and Greg disconnected the jumper so that the antenna was now for 80m, and worked several stations including DL on there, while I disappeared over to the trig point to try and rustle up some regular SOTA chasers on the 2m handheld before midnight UTC - so I could give them double points with repeat QSOs just after the boundary into Sunday. I worked a few, but no regular chasers.  Thanks to:

Some videos of our 160m activation are here, here and here!

We dismantled the 160m/80m antenna, and shifted the SLAB over to Greg's 2m station. And off we went again, a new SOTA day - now after 0100 BST (0000 UTC) on Sunday 11th May 2008 - and a new SOTA activation.  Perhaps one should not expect huge pile-ups at quarter-past one in the morning, but we are rather spoilt here in NW England with VHF activity around the clock, so we were quite surprised that the calls on S20 - or even into the GB3MN repeater, were not answered apart from the odd one here and there. We broke into a net and worked down some stations there, but it mattered not. Sean and Greg had already got the point from their previous day's activation (half-an-hour ago!), so this one would be a zero-pointer anyway. I think I had already got the point for this summit in 2008 also...!  Sometime around 0120 BST, a group of torchlit walkers came across the summit and descended towards Timbersbrook - astonishing!

We eventually called it a day and packed everything up around 1.30am BST, and made our torchlit descent back to Cloudside. Sean M0GIA was still visibly glowing from the success of his top-band aerial, so much so that he reminded me of the Ready Brek TV adverts in the 1980s! We made the dark and eerie drive through North Rode and Gawsworth back to my home QTH, where I was dropped off. An exciting and rewarding evening - but my goodness, I was completely exhausted by now, at the end of a 21 hour SOTA day! My bed awaited, and I was into my dream-free coma-like sleep immediately. Mind you, that's normal.  Many thanks to the following stations, all worked on 2m FM with 2.5 watts: