SOTA Activations GW/NW-061 Y Golfa & MW-026 Long Mountain August 12 2014

Geoff 2E0NON and I needed two easy summits before heading home on day two of this all too short business / pleasure trip into Mid-Wales. 

GW/MW-026 Long Mountain / Beacon Ring is almost drive on - a short walk from near the transmitter masts took us to a picnic table on the edge of the escarpment... 

G4OBK - my car - was parked up - note the brolly - it looked like rain

We walked to the left of the transmitter site to where we set up the 2m FM station in comfort on the picnic table. GW4TQE/P was worked on GW/NW-049 Gyrn Moelfre.

Here is Geoff logging his 9 contacts on 2m FM - the brolly was not needed after all!

After 15 minutes we packed up and headed to a golf club near Welshpool, not for golf but for more amateur radio... 

GW/NW-061 Y Golfa

We turned right off the A458 at SJ 168065. The name gives the location of this summit away - it lies at the highest point on a golf course and within access land. No need to ask permission then to visit, but if you park in the clubhouse it pays to ask permission for that, which of course we did without problem.  It took just 17 minutes to reach the summit and we were travelling light with just a small 50 watt Yaesu FT1500M Transceiver, half wave vertical dipole and 5m fishing pole.

We ran the station for another 15 minutes and completed 7 contacts with five English Stations and two Welsh ones - notably Alan GW4VPX and Mal GW6OVD/P who was on the summit of Hirfynydd GW/SW-017. 

So that was as much of Wales I could manage for the time being, writing this blog report months later, it was to be January 2015 before I returned to Wales for more SOTA there...