This morning Kris MM7OAI and I met to walk up and activate Ben Venue. We started the walk at the car park facing Loch Achray which has a charge of £5 for the day. This car park is on the Duke’s Pass which is an outstanding road for those who enjoy a spirited drive. The walk was tracked by GPS and uploaded here to Strava for those interested.
The forecast for the day wasn’t great, we anticipated poor visibility as we gained altitude and expected rain for the walk up, luckily we avoided the rain which certainly made things better.
The walk up to the summit is pleasant, took us just under three hours. The first half of this is on the forestry path and it’s well signposted. You do eventually come to a point where the signposts stop, but you are warned of this in advance which is helpful.
On the way up there is one boggy section that requires a little thought and some areas of the climb also need a little planning - nothing too difficult. The difficulty of this would increase somewhat in the winter months.
Shortly after passing the rocky climb, our visibility started to disappear.
We reached the summit in just over two hours of walking time. There were breaks in the cloud that gave us moments of visibility but for the most part it was a white out.
At the summit we put a call out on 2M FM using a Quansheng handheld and tactical (tape measure) antenna. We received a response almost immediately but then nothing - an alert was posted ahead of time so this came as a surprise.
We then heard Jack GM4COX confirm that multiple stations were calling us, but unfortunately we were not hearing them. We moved to various elevated locations, pointed the antenna in various directions but with limited success. We did get some others in the log, but not some of the usual stations that Jack mentioned were calling. With 6 contacts on the handheld in the log, we moved to HF.
For this activation Kris was using his new Sotabeams Bandhopper Linked Dipole with his Xiegu X6100.
I opted to use my M1ECC Slidewinder DX Multi-Section with my Icom IC-705. I have some doubts about this antenna for SOTA use, specifically with the IC-705. I’ll write a seperate post about that.
We both secured a further 7 contacts each before calling it a day. There was a contest on and the band was busy as a result. As we packed up we heard Gerald GM4OIG call out at GM/SS-073 Mullwharchar securing a summit to summit.
On our way down we came across two of the happiest dogs and had a chat with their owner. This was an enjoyable walk, everyone on the day was enjoying themselves and in a great mood - some took some interest in our radio activity too.
We both finished the day with 14 contacts. My HF on 20M and Kris on 40M.
