GW/SW010

Craig y Llyn    600m   4points

Association Wales region South Wales
Latitude 51  43  0 N     Longitude  3  35  0  W
Grid reference SN907 032   Locator IO81fr

It was New Years Eve and my last chance to activate Craig-y-Llyn within the 2012 period. This summit is quite close to my home QTH and lies at the North end of the Rhondda Valley. After a short drive I arrived at my starting point on the Rhigos Mountain (SN921025). The weather was very poor with strong winds and lashing rain so I put on my wet weather gear and set off for the summit at around 9.40 am. This is one of the easier summits in the SW SOTA region with forest roads all the way and a gentle incline (at least where I started from!). It took under half an hour to cover the 2km to the summit.

This particular summit has a trig point set between the forest road and the tree line. Because of the poor WX I decided to place the homebrew SlimJim antenna in the trig point and run the coax into the trees which would afford me some protection from the wind and the rain. I used some bin liners that I had in my rucksack to help keep the rain out of the equipment. By around 10.30 I was operating and the contacts started to roll in. By 11.0am I had bagged around 7 contacts and discovered that waterproof trousers aren’t waterproof when sitting in a pool of water on your tarpaulin groundsheet! Wet and cold I decided to call it a day, packed up and headed back to the car.

As always I would like to thank all the stations that called in and helped with the activation.

73 and see you in 2013!

Andy – GW7RKC

The Trig-point with SlimJim

Soggy Equipment Under Trees!

GPS Track-log of Route

Contacts Made