Mendick Hill SOTA

Today CyclopsJnr and I went for a walk up Mendick Hill, which went really well.  CyclopsJnr is getting better and better at walking, but if I want to play radio on a hilltop (and do a Summits On the Air - SOTA activation) he tends to get cold very quickly...

Ages ago I saw a video about shelters another SOTA operator uses, so I decided to give that a go.  The shelter you see behind CyclopsJnr is made from a simple tarp with a handful of tent pegs to hold it down and a walking pole to keep the "roof" up.  Since we usually take walking poles anyway, the only extra weight is the tarp which is well under a kilogram.

I was pretty skeptical whether it would either stand up to a good Scottish gale or provide any real warmth, but it was brilliant!  As soon as we went inside it was hats and gloves off, jackets open.  We were in there for well over an hour, I got the contacts I needed on the radio, CyclopsJnr read a book (!) and we had lunch.  It was a nasty shock coming back out into the gale - it was extremely cold on the fingers taking the antenna down...

Not a great crop of contacts - a few local ones on VHF, a couple of Spanish stations and an Italian on HF.  Anyway, it was all good fun!