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The weather forecast suggests that the fine spell we have enjoyed for the last few days – which has caused the G4ILO shorts to be brought out of the wardrobe unusually early – is going to end soon. So I thought I would try an activation this morning of the small summit of Dodd, LDW-174 for Wainwrights On The Air. Being a tightwad, I didn’t want to pay the Forestry Commission’s exorbitant charges to park at the visitor centre so I parked off the road at a spot about a mile north of the official car park. I’ll happily walk an extra two miles to save £6.50!

I was afraid this well-known parking spot would be full but in fact there were only two other cars there, a silver Nissan and an old BMW that was very dusty and looked suspiciously as if it might have been there a while. I set off along the path and had hardly walked a few paces when I saw some car keys in the undergrowth beside the path. “I bet they are BMW keys” I thought to myself as I picked them up and sure enough they were.

Now I had a dilemma. Perhaps someone had dropped their keys and would be coming back to look for them, so I should leave them where they were. It was just a gut instinct that made me suspect the BMW had been stolen and some thief had left it in this quiet spot and thrown away the keys before switching to another car. If it wasn’t a stolen car, surely it soon would be if I left the keys so close to the vehicle itself. So I decided to walk to the visitor centre and hand the keys in, explain what had happened and suggest they called the police to investigate.

This I did, before beginning the ascent of Dodd up the forestry road. It is a rather dull plod until you reach the col between Dodd and the Ullock Pike ridge and the path curves round Dodd’s conical summit until this view over Derwentwater opens up. Then it is another short upward plod until you reach the summit (top picture.)

As I reached the higher altitudes it was clear that the stiff cold wind that has been a feature of the entire weekend and made conditions a lot less pleasant than the photos suggest was still with us. The WOTA Pole was still broken (and probably won’t be repaired) so in its place I was using my new rucksack mounted telescopic 5/8 vertical. This is the old telescopic 5/8 BNC antenna with a new more robust whip fitted to the spring/loading coil. Because the weight of the whip makes the spring bend over it is encased in a piece of plastic electrical conduit which is Araldited to the base of the telescopic whip. This fits into the base section of conduit using one of the famous fragile jointing pieces. A female BNC plugs into the BNC base of the antenna, with the coax and a 19in pigtail counterpoise. This gave a perfect 1:1 SWR at 145MHz when tested at home using my antenna analyzer. It fits nicely in the rucksack with the telescopic whip sticking up above my head, the ultimate fashion accessory for the keen WOTAphile.

The radio was the Kenwood TH-D72 stuck on my belt. The headset I first tried on Carrock Fell proved itself once again, both in helping me to hear the other stations in the howling gale and in keeping the wind noise out of my audio. Regular readers can probably detect a trend here. I think the Kenwood is finally coming into its own as my APRS radio of choice.

I called CQ WOTA a couple of times, with no replies! Was this going to be a failed activation? Eventually to my great relief Mark MM1MPB came back. He gave me only a 5 by 5, which I improved to a 5 by 9 by walking a short way to the other side of the summit. I was concerned that perhaps something was wrong with the antenna so I swapped to the Nagoya NA-701 short dual band flexy-whip and Mark gave me only 5 by 3 so the 5/8 seemed to be doing its stuff. Dodd is quite a hemmed-in summit and although I could see across the Solway to Scotland it’s possible that the path to Annan was blocked by the Ullock Pike ridge and the northern flanks of Skiddaw.

A few more calls and I was pleased to be answered by Colin G4UXH in Milnthorpe who had noticed the website spot placed by Mark, and then Steve M0IGG from Walney Island. Both stations were beyond the southern boundary of the Lake District and so at a fair distance. Clearly I was getting out, just not many people were listening. I also worked M6BDV/P on Little Mell Fell for a summit to summit contact, who confused me at first by using the call MW6… his home area being Wales. But that was it. None of the Workington mob or the Penrith crew. I guess everyone was WOTAed out after all the activations over the weekend.

I didn’t even see another person on the summit, which is quite unusual. Not that I minded that at all, in fact I always prefer to have a summit to myself than have hordes of people wondering what I am doing.

The views as always from Dodd on a clear day were stunning. But it was damn cold no thanks to that icy wind, so I was pleased to pack up and head back down to the car again. The BMW had gone by the time I returned. How it came to be there with its keys tossed in the undergrowth will probably forever remain a mystery.

Sometimes conditions on the fell-tops are not what you expect when you leave home. Yesterday, having no desire to watch the big event in London, I decided to have a big event of my own, namely to activate two of the Northern Fells for Wainwrights On The Air (WOTA). Although the weather was a little hazy there had been several sunny days and I anticipated two leisurely activations lazing in the grass and basking in the sun beside my guyed WOTA Pole, perhaps even some DX due to atmospheric conditions. I did notice a chilly breeze as I went out to the car, so I went back and got an extra fleece. That turned out to be a good move.

It was about 45 minutes drive to the parking spot at Caldbeck Common. I set off on a circuitous but easy climb up to High Pike, the first summit, working Jimmy on Blencathra who was using a special Wedding call MR3EYP/P on the way. No getting away completely from thoughts of the big event in London.

Half way up I noticed the wind was getting stronger and chillier. The extra fleece was quickly donned, and I worked another activator with a Royal call, MR1EYO/P on Red Screes. By the time I reached the summit I felt conditions were such that I didn’t want to stay long up there. After a contact with Bill G4WSB/P on Grasmoor whose voice was at times unintelligible due to wind getting into the mic of his Quansheng, I walked down from the summit in search of a slightly less windy spot to eat my packed lunch.

Whilst eating my lunch I weakly heard Derek 2E0MIX/P on Maiden Moor but I didn’t dare nip up to the top to make a contact in case my rucksack and other things blew away. When I did return to the summit I found the wind was blowing icy rain into my face. I didn’t have any enthusiasm for putting the WOTA Pole up as I didn’t intend staying there long enough for the effort to be worthwhile. I also didn’t want to get the non-waterproof Kenwood TH-D72 – which I’d taken after realizing the limitations of the receiver of the VX-8R – wet. So I sat on the stone bench near the wind break on the summit and using the 8in. helical rubber duck rapidly worked 7 of the ‘usual suspects’, contest-style, then stuffed the Kenwood in the rucksack and set off on my way to the next summit.

Carrock Fell is is a rocky summit with a big cairn, overlooking a valley. By the time I got there the rain had stopped and the wind had dropped a bit and seemed less cold. There were numerous large rocks scattered about making inviting seats. I decided to put up the WOTA Pole. First, I had a fight untangling the guys, which had knotted themselves together. Then, while pulling up the antenna using the third guy, doing my trick of using my walking stick as a bottom section for extra height, there was a crack and the antenna fell back on the ground. The jointing piece between the lower two sections of plastic tube had cracked. Arrgh!

So I was forced once again to do the activation using the 8in. helical rubber duck. However one piece of equipment favourably surprised me. Well, two, really. I began to get used to the Kenwood TH-D72 and felt that perhaps it is a viable alternative to the VX-8GR to use on activations. I received several APRS messages while I was up in the hills and found it easy to read and reply to them. Before I set off I used ?APRSO to load APRS objects for the two summits into the radio which I used to help navigation and check proximity. Very useful, though having to page forward a couple of times is less convenient than the VX-8’s all in one view.

I’m still not convinced that the Kenwood’s snazzy metallic grey paint and plasticky casing isn’t going to start showing marks from the rough and tumble of use up in the mountains. And the radio does sometimes do things I don’t understand, like beep and do nothing when I press the PTT, or beep and mute the audio of the station I’m listening to until I press the PTT again. I think this may be something to do with the APRS functions but it confuses me. The battery endurance doesn’t seem to be as good as the Yaesu either. But I’m learning to love it.

This was also the first time I could try out a headset for the Kenwood that I’d bought for £3.99 on eBay. The price, which included shipping from Hong Kong, was so low I doubted that it could be any good. But it was also cheap enough to be worth a gamble. It turned out to be the ideal accessory for operating from windy hilltops. The microphone has a foam muffler and even with my head turned so that wind was blowing on to the mic stations reported that there was only very slight wind noise, not enough to interfere with copy. With my head turned away there was no wind noise at all. Experienced activators will know just how hard it is, when it is windy, to find a position that keeps the wind out of the mic on the front of the radio.

Despite the unexpectedly nasty weather I had a nice walk and two successful activations. I may have one last try with the WOTA Pole. I will superglue the cracked jointing piece and then try reinforcing them with nylon cable ties. If that doesn’t help then I must give up the idea or accept that it will only work with longer tubes and only one joining section.

Sometimes conditions on the fell-tops are not what you expect when you leave home. Yesterday, having no desire to watch the big event in London, I decided to have a big event of my own, namely to activate two of the Northern Fells for Wainwrights On The Air (WOTA). Although the weather was a little hazy there had been several sunny days and I anticipated two leisurely activations lazing in the grass and basking in the sun beside my guyed WOTA Pole, perhaps even some DX due to atmospheric conditions. I did notice a chilly breeze as I went out to the car, so I went back and got an extra fleece. That turned out to be a good move.

It was about 45 minutes drive to the parking spot at Caldbeck Common. I set off on a circuitous but easy climb up to High Pike, the first summit, working Jimmy on Blencathra who was using a special Wedding call MR3EYP/P on the way. No getting away completely from thoughts of the big event in London.

Half way up I noticed the wind was getting stronger and chillier. The extra fleece was quickly donned, and I worked another activator with a Royal call, MR1EYO/P on Red Screes. By the time I reached the summit I felt conditions were such that I didn’t want to stay long up there. After a contact with Bill G4WSB/P on Grasmoor whose voice was at times unintelligible due to wind getting into the mic of his Quansheng, I walked down from the summit in search of a slightly less windy spot to eat my packed lunch.

Whilst eating my lunch I weakly heard Derek 2E0MIX/P on Maiden Moor but I didn’t dare nip up to the top to make a contact in case my rucksack and other things blew away. When I did return to the summit I found the wind was blowing icy rain into my face. I didn’t have any enthusiasm for putting the WOTA Pole up as I didn’t intend staying there long enough for the effort to be worthwhile. I also didn’t want to get the non-waterproof Kenwood TH-D72 – which I’d taken after realizing the limitations of the receiver of the VX-8R – wet. So I sat on the stone bench near the wind break on the summit and using the 8in. helical rubber duck rapidly worked 7 of the ‘usual suspects’, contest-style, then stuffed the Kenwood in the rucksack and set off on my way to the next summit.

Carrock Fell is is a rocky summit with a big cairn, overlooking a valley. By the time I got there the rain had stopped and the wind had dropped a bit and seemed less cold. There were numerous large rocks scattered about making inviting seats. I decided to put up the WOTA Pole. First, I had a fight untangling the guys, which had knotted themselves together. Then, while pulling up the antenna using the third guy, doing my trick of using my walking stick as a bottom section for extra height, there was a crack and the antenna fell back on the ground. The jointing piece between the lower two sections of plastic tube had cracked. Arrgh!

So I was forced once again to do the activation using the 8in. helical rubber duck. However one piece of equipment favourably surprised me. Well, two, really. I began to get used to the Kenwood TH-D72 and felt that perhaps it is a viable alternative to the VX-8GR to use on activations. I received several APRS messages while I was up in the hills and found it easy to read and reply to them. Before I set off I used ?APRSO to load APRS objects for the two summits into the radio which I used to help navigation and check proximity. Very useful, though having to page forward a couple of times is less convenient than the VX-8’s all in one view.

I’m still not convinced that the Kenwood’s snazzy metallic grey paint and plasticky casing isn’t going to start showing marks from the rough and tumble of use up in the mountains. And the radio does sometimes do things I don’t understand, like beep and do nothing when I press the PTT, or beep and mute the audio of the station I’m listening to until I press the PTT again. I think this may be something to do with the APRS functions but it confuses me. The battery endurance doesn’t seem to be as good as the Yaesu either. But I’m learning to love it.

This was also the first time I could try out a headset for the Kenwood that I’d bought for £3.99 on eBay. The price, which included shipping from Hong Kong, was so low I doubted that it could be any good. But it was also cheap enough to be worth a gamble. It turned out to be the ideal accessory for operating from windy hilltops. The microphone has a foam muffler and even with my head turned so that wind was blowing on to the mic stations reported that there was only very slight wind noise, not enough to interfere with copy. With my head turned away there was no wind noise at all. Experienced activators will know just how hard it is, when it is windy, to find a position that keeps the wind out of the mic on the front of the radio.

Despite the unexpectedly nasty weather I had a nice walk and two successful activations. I may have one last try with the WOTA Pole. I will superglue the cracked jointing piece and then try reinforcing them with nylon cable ties. If that doesn’t help then I must give up the idea or accept that it will only work with longer tubes and only one joining section.

This afternoon I went for a stroll up Ling Fell, LDW-205. It was a fine afternoon and I wanted a bit of exercise. I took the VX-8GR so I could test the new QRU feature of Lynn KJ4ERJ’s APRSISCE/32 software that allows an APRS user to receive information about nearby objects on request. I have created a QRU server for Wainwright summits so that an APRS user in the fells could receive information about the nearest summits, to aid identification or navigation.

I put a 2m helical antenna on the rucksack support for the walk up, so the VX-8GR could send my position. The other channel was monitoring 145.500MHz (S20) the FM calling channel. As I gained height I started to hear some loud bursts of interference, a combination of a whine and a buzz, on S20. When I got to the top I switched antennas to the RH-770 dual band telescopic. My first call was answered by Colin, 2E0XSD. His signal was moving the meter on the VX-8GR to an S3 or 4 but there was intermittently a lot of crackly interference over his audio. I tried engaging the RX Attenuator option in the VX-8GR menu and it did seem to improve things a bit, but not completely.

A bit later, when I was testing the QRU server, I could hear the APRS packets coming back from my gateway (which is line of sight from Ling Fell, just behind me in the distance in the picture) but they sounded distorted and the VX-8GR didn’t decode them.

I wondered if there was a fault with the cable to the rucksack mount so I put the antenna directly on the radio. My next call was answered by Geoff G4WHA from his car in the car park in Penrith. He was 5 by 1 but his signal was cutting out intermittently. I got the feeling the problem wasn’t Geoff’s, but was my receiver cutting out due to overload from some nearby transmitter. There is a commercial mast a couple of miles away on the other side of the valley, though I have no idea what is on it.

I am starting to get a feeling that the receiver in the VX-8GR is not much good on summits when connected to a decent antenna. I first noticed odd things with the original VX-8R I had when I tried it out with a SOTA Beams MFD. There have also been several occasions when other people using VX-8 series rigs on summits have failed to hear me, even though I could hear them clearly and in some cases was running much more power than they were. This is quite disappointing. I really like the VX-8GR and much prefer it over the Kenwood TH-D72 which I have been thinking about selling. But perhaps it would be better to keep the Kenwood.

I wish that I had the test equipment to try to compare the strong signal performance of my various hand held radios. HF radios have their receiver performance exhaustively tested and the results of tests by the likes of Sherwood Labs are endlessly debated on various reflectors despite the fact that the only difference it is likely to make is whether you can copy a very weak station right next door to an extremely strong one. But the reviews of VHF radios focus only on matters like the ease of use of the menu system, how many memories it has or how the scanning works.

I think the receive performance of VHF/UHF hand helds is just as important as for HF receivers. If a receiver can’t cope on a hilltop on the middle of nowhere how will it fare with the signal levels in a busy urban environment? Heck, you might be missing vital emcomms messages and not know it! It’s about time the ham radio magazines started publishing blocking dynamic range and cross-mod figures for hand held radios.

This afternoon I went for a stroll up Ling Fell, LDW-205. It was a fine afternoon and I wanted a bit of exercise. I took the VX-8GR so I could test the new QRU feature of Lynn KJ4ERJ’s APRSISCE/32 software that allows an APRS user to receive information about nearby objects on request. I have created a QRU server for Wainwright summits so that an APRS user in the fells could receive information about the nearest summits, to aid identification or navigation.

I put a 2m helical antenna on the rucksack support for the walk up, so the VX-8GR could send my position. The other channel was monitoring 145.500MHz (S20) the FM calling channel. As I gained height I started to hear some loud bursts of interference, a combination of a whine and a buzz, on S20. When I got to the top I switched antennas to the RH-770 dual band telescopic. My first call was answered by Colin, 2E0XSD. His signal was moving the meter on the VX-8GR to an S3 or 4 but there was intermittently a lot of crackly interference over his audio. I tried engaging the RX Attenuator option in the VX-8GR menu and it did seem to improve things a bit, but not completely.

A bit later, when I was testing the QRU server, I could hear the APRS packets coming back from my gateway (which is line of sight from Ling Fell, just behind me in the distance in the picture) but they sounded distorted and the VX-8GR didn’t decode them.

I wondered if there was a fault with the cable to the rucksack mount so I put the antenna directly on the radio. My next call was answered by Geoff G4WHA from his car in the car park in Penrith. He was 5 by 1 but his signal was cutting out intermittently. I got the feeling the problem wasn’t Geoff’s, but was my receiver cutting out due to overload from some nearby transmitter. There is a commercial mast a couple of miles away on the other side of the valley, though I have no idea what is on it.

I am starting to get a feeling that the receiver in the VX-8GR is not much good on summits when connected to a decent antenna. I first noticed odd things with the original VX-8R I had when I tried it out with a SOTA Beams MFD. There have also been several occasions when other people using VX-8 series rigs on summits have failed to hear me, even though I could hear them clearly and in some cases was running much more power than they were. This is quite disappointing. I really like the VX-8GR and much prefer it over the Kenwood TH-D72 which I have been thinking about selling. But perhaps it would be better to keep the Kenwood.

I wish that I had the test equipment to try to compare the strong signal performance of my various hand held radios. HF radios have their receiver performance exhaustively tested and the results of tests by the likes of Sherwood Labs are endlessly debated on various reflectors despite the fact that the only difference it is likely to make is whether you can copy a very weak station right next door to an extremely strong one. But the reviews of VHF radios focus only on matters like the ease of use of the menu system, how many memories it has or how the scanning works.

I think the receive performance of VHF/UHF hand helds is just as important as for HF receivers. If a receiver can’t cope on a hilltop on the middle of nowhere how will it fare with the signal levels in a busy urban environment? Heck, you might be missing vital emcomms messages and not know it! It’s about time the ham radio magazines started publishing blocking dynamic range and cross-mod figures for hand held radios.

For Easter Sunday, Bassenthwaite Rotary Club of which fellow WOTA enthusiast Phil M0AYB is a member put on, in aid of charity, a Felltop Café on the summit of Latrigg, a very minor but frequently visited Wainwright summit just to the north of Keswick. Phil planned to activate the summit while he was there. The opportunity to have coffee and cakes while activating a summit was too good to resist so I decided to pay Phil a visit and do my own activation. The weather played fair and was glorious, too.

Latrigg is an easy summit – really a foothill of Skiddaw – and so it was not too much of a problem for my back which is better but still not fully recovered. The views on the way up are glorious, which is why Latrigg is a popular target for visitors to the area.

From the summit you look down to the town of Keswick, with its lake, Derwentwater, beyond.

Soon after we arrived I heard Richard G1JTD/P on Yoke in the Eastern Fells, and worked him for a summit to summit. Yoke was not a summit I’d have much hope of working from home so that was a bonus.

Olga and I went and got some coffee and Cumberland sausages in a bap from the café. The coffee was excellent. There was quite a queue for refreshments and I hope the enterprise made a lot of money for Bassenthwaite Rotary Club’s charity.

Phil had brought up a 9 element Tonna on a short mast which he was using with an FT-817 running 2.5W. I was using the Nagoya NA-767 mentioned in my previous post on comparing handheld antennas with the Kenwood TH-D72 and 5W output (though not in the picture.) I worked most of the same stations Phil had, and some of them commented that my signal was similar or close to as strong as Phil’s, which was quite gratifying.

This was the first activation I have done with the TH-D72. I have been hoping that in time I would grow to like this radio but I’m afraid it has not won me over. It’s too big and bulky and the case feels plasticky and not rugged enough to stand the knocks and bumps experienced on a summit. I still prefer the VX-8GR, though as noted in previous posts the receiver of that gets easily de-sensed in the presence of the strong signals experienced on a hilltop with a good antenna.

For Easter Sunday, Bassenthwaite Rotary Club of which fellow WOTA enthusiast Phil M0AYB is a member put on, in aid of charity, a Felltop Café on the summit of Latrigg, a very minor but frequently visited Wainwright summit just to the north of Keswick. Phil planned to activate the summit while he was there. The opportunity to have coffee and cakes while activating a summit was too good to resist so I decided to pay Phil a visit and do my own activation. The weather played fair and was glorious, too.

Latrigg is an easy summit – really a foothill of Skiddaw – and so it was not too much of a problem for my back which is better but still not fully recovered. The views on the way up are glorious, which is why Latrigg is a popular target for visitors to the area.

From the summit you look down to the town of Keswick, with its lake, Derwentwater, beyond.

Soon after we arrived I heard Richard G1JTD/P on Yoke in the Eastern Fells, and worked him for a summit to summit. Yoke was not a summit I’d have much hope of working from home so that was a bonus.

Olga and I went and got some coffee and Cumberland sausages in a bap from the café. The coffee was excellent. There was quite a queue for refreshments and I hope the enterprise made a lot of money for Bassenthwaite Rotary Club’s charity.

Phil had brought up a 9 element Tonna on a short mast which he was using with an FT-817 running 2.5W. I was using the Nagoya NA-767 mentioned in my previous post on comparing handheld antennas with the Kenwood TH-D72 and 5W output (though not in the picture.) I worked most of the same stations Phil had, and some of them commented that my signal was similar or close to as strong as Phil’s, which was quite gratifying.

This was the first activation I have done with the TH-D72. I have been hoping that in time I would grow to like this radio but I’m afraid it has not won me over. It’s too big and bulky and the case feels plasticky and not rugged enough to stand the knocks and bumps experienced on a summit. I still prefer the VX-8GR, though as noted in previous posts the receiver of that gets easily de-sensed in the presence of the strong signals experienced on a hilltop with a good antenna.