GM5ALX

SOTA

Meikle Balloch Hill

GM/ES-082

Height
366 m
Points
1
Distance
3.6 km
Ascent
150 m
Time
56m
QSOs
9
Bands
40m20m

Another early morning start with swim training drop off, so I thought I'd make the most of it and tick off another 1-pointer in the north. The weather was nice too, chilly but no wind and clear blue skies. I knew this would be a quick one as it's at most 30 minutes walk to the summit.

Sign at the car park
Sign at the car park

An easy route, car parking spaces and then follow the sign posted track to the summit. The hill is quite flat, so the activation zone is pretty big, and if you were in a real hurry you could skip a third of the walk! Soon at the trig point, I made use of a broken sign post that was lying by it to give some weight to my mast. This was because the cover was still in the trig point, otherwise I'd have used the hole in that.

Start of the track - cut through the trees
Start of the track - cut through the trees
Through the woods
Through the woods
Station
Station

I started on 40m and got the folks in our SOTA whatsapp chat group, but otherwise it was very quiet. Perhaps the early morning, it was 8am when I was on the air, and the poorer band conditions. K was 4 so a little limiting. Even more so on 20m as I only managed three more contacts. In total, more than enough for the activation though. Admired the view for a few minutes, with several SOTA summits visible in the area, then packed up and headed back down and off to work, arriving no differently than if I'd taken the kids to school!

Summit selfie
Summit selfie

On air

RefNameHeightPtsUTCQSOsBands
GM/ES-082 ✓ Meikle Balloch Hill 366 1 08:00–08:11 9 40m20m

Route

2003004000.511.522.53kmm

3.6 km · 150 m up · high point 369 m · GPX

Contacts

  • 40m 6
  • 20m 3

9 contacts, 9 stations · best DX EA2CKX, 1,614 km on 20m

Log
UTCCallBandModeSentRcvdkmRef
08:002M0WNA40mSSB595729
08:00G5OLD40mSSB5958678
08:01MM0EFI40mSSB595943
08:03MW0CBC40mSSB5965646
08:04M0RWX40mSSB5956661
08:06G4IAR40mSSB5959540
08:09DK1MI20mSSB59331,219
08:10EA2CKX20mSSB52521,614
08:11DC8YZ20mSSB59531,294