It’s a gentle enough walk up the 3.5km road with about 220m of height gain. This is a popular walk and cycle route so pay attention to any cyclists coming downhill – the road is maintained as an access road not a motorway so cyclists making evasive manoeuvres will end up in the bog! For those into geocaching there are a set of caches along this road.
The news made no mention of the VHF field day that was on that weekend, and of those that listened to the news very few stayed on air to answer my CQ’s. Granted, there was a bit of a net going on on 145.550 after the news but I thought counting QSO’s on a net for a contest might be against the spirit of things!
I managed 9 contacts in an hour with only 3 over the Irish Sea. Signals from the UK were had QSB of 4 points so you could get sporadic bits of another station but not enough for a QSO. I heard no traffic on SSB. With my battery alarm disconnected as it was beeping too much I finally made my 10th contact with EI6FR at almost 2pm local time. Why did I want 10? Well the IRTS rules changed last year so that for entries in 2m contest sections a minimum of 10 qso’s is necessary for the award. Now I’m not too pushed about getting an award or not – but being just one qso short I had to stay until I could get it!