Wanted to get another SOTA in before the winter bonus finished but with the weather being pretty rubbish, I did not want to take too much of a risk with a higher fell, so I had to look at sotlas and found Cracoe Fell near Skipton. As luck would have it, if you were just off the summit but still in the activation zone you could make this a 2fr as well.
I got packed up the night before so I could have an early start, but I slept in so I did not leave till just after eight. The driver was not too bad, but the rain was getting quite heavy and there was a lot of fog, so I was a little worried about what it was gonna be like on top of the fell.
I got to Craeco and got parked up but I could not see the summit as it was shrouded in mist. Put my boots on, double-checked my bag and set off on the walk. The start of the walk was quite flat and good under foot, but I knew as I was going up a hill that I would have to start climbing at some point. The path continued gently rising up the hill and the path was still good to walk on. I double check the map and saw I would have to turn off off the good footpath and then start heading up towards the summit. As I started to climb, I saw tiny bits of snow on the ground and wondered what it would be like on the summit, by this point I was walking in clouds and there started to be more and more snow on the ground and the footpaths were a little streams with water running down them. I plodded on, gaining height and not seeing much as I was in the clouds.
Finally in the distance, I could see the obelisk on the Summit, so I knew I would be able to set up the radio soon. There was snow all on the ground here, so I was wondering where I’ll be able to set up and stay dry. There was a large rocky outcrop which I hoped would be out of the wind so I walked over to it. I was happy to say happy to find it was out the wind. It was a relief to take my rucksack off and I started to set up the mast and antenna.
I did a quick check on the compass to make sure that the end fed long wire would be pointed roughly south to try and work Europe as well as the UK. With the antenna set up, I fired up the radio and had a tune around to see who I could hear. There were a few UK POTA stations, but they were in middle of pileups and my 5 W was not gonna cut it to break through their pileups so I found my own free frequency and started calling CQ.
First to come back to me was Ken G0FEX and then straight after John G0MHF and then my pileup started, in the middle of it I heard a familiar voice and call sign it was Don G0RQL, and and this was my 50th contact with him whilst doing POTA. After that, I got quite a few Welsh stations which made me wonder which way my antenna was pointing, maybe it was more southeast and going to miss Europe, but then I got a Belgian ON7ZM and a northern Irish station GI4TAJ followed by a German station DL9NCI so nothing to worry about.
The calls on 40 starts to dry up so I decided to switch 20 metres and see if I could get some more DX. It started with Manuel EA2DT and then a pile up with a mixture of German Spanish Italian stations. The furthest I got was into Finland with OH3GZ and who says you can’t work the world with 5 watts. I had a quick blast on 10 metres but heard nothing so with getting cold I decided to pack up on head back down the hill.
Walk down was quite easy apart from one small bug where I took a step and ended up to My knee in wet mud. I quickly pulled my foot out Before the water could get into my boot. After that it was just a quick easy walk back to the car for a warm brew and then the drive home.
| Operation Details |
| Park: https://pota.app/#/park/GB-0208 https://pota.app/#/park/GB1630 Summit: https://www.sotadata.org.uk/en/summit/G/NP-032 Grid square: IO84xa WAB square: SE95 |
| Working Conditions |
| Icom IC-705 Icom AH-705 Sotabeams tactical mini Sotabeams EFLW Ham2K Polo |
| Operation Totals |
| 28 QSOs 12 DXCC Entities 2 Band and 1 mode 40m – 14 SSB 20m – 14 SSB |
