GW/MW-026 Long Mountain Beacon Ring

GW/MW-026  Long Mountain Beacon Ring

28/10/2016

'Ticking off' the uniques

As we had a rather special occasion the following day I had booked into a B&B near Telford so the opportunity arose to activate Long Mountain Beacon Ring on the way up. This is a summit with minimal walking but needed to be 'ticked off the list'  

First comms tower...car tucked in on the right

Probably the views from this summit are wonderful but not today as most of the mountain tops in Wales were shrouded in low cloud and mist. We parked next to the first of the Communications towers (SJ 266057) and walked along a lane to a small wooden gate next to the second tower which took us along the ‘moat’ of this old hill fort.

Second comms tower...wooden gate on the left

Val reading the information board...little did she realise how close she was to the Geocache

As we walked around we were flushing pheasants out of the crop in the field next to the moat…quite a sight. 

Zoomed in on this one

As those who have activated this summit will know that the trig point is in the woods so after I had found it I decided to operate just on the edge of the wood  close to its location as it was not practical to erect an antenna in the wood …some have tried and succeeded.

In search of the trig...

As Val left  to look for a Geocache I spotted myself on 60m and within 9 minutes I had 10 chasers in the log.  

FT817 being withdrawn from the Dry bag

'Final calls' as Val arrived back to take this pic

During this brief visit to the band I noticed that I was running on the internal batteries of the FT817 so I suspected a problem with the lead from the external LiPo.  With apologies to Jack GM4COX for not being able to chat I called ‘final call’ and switched off as soon as nobody answered. A quick rummage in the rucksack and the spare lead was hooked up and I was back on the LiPo.

11:39z	M0JLA	5MHz	SSB	Rod
11:39z	EI3GYB	5MHz	SSB	Michael
11:41z	EI9GLB	5MHz	SSB	Jim
11:41z	PA0SKP	5MHz	SSB	Sake
11:42z	G4IAR	5MHz	SSB	Dave
11:42z	G0VWP	5MHz	SSB	Terry
11:44z	G0RQL	5MHz	SSB	Don
11:46z	GM4COX	5MHz	SSB	Jack
11:46z	G0ELJ	5MHz	SSB	Dave
11:48z	G4WHA/A	5MHz	SSB	Geoff
11:53z	EI3GYB	7MHz	SSB	Michael
11:54z	OK3KW	7MHz	SSB
11:54z	G0VWP	7MHz	SSB	Terry
11:55z	M0IML	7MHz	SSB	Barry
11:56z	ON5SWA	7MHz	SSB	Francois
11:57z	OK1DVM	7MHz	SSB	Mirozlav

Not many contacts on 40m as the band was not favourable for the UK although Barry M0IML in Kent  was in the log with 5/9 each way and Michael EI3GYB was booming in from Ireland.  After many final calls I decided to pull the plug.

My activation set up:-  (HF) Yaesu FT817 (5 watts) using 12V 4 Ah LiPO battery,  3 band link dipole (60/40/20 (+15m+80m extensions if needed), Antenna support - 7m Fishing pole.

Thanks everyone for the contacts

73 Allan GW4VPX