On Saturday the 21st of March I got up early and drove to Wales for a weekend of SOTA and walking in the Welsh Hills. My first stop was the summit of Waun Fach (GW/SW-002) which is 811m ASL and worth 8 SOTA points.
I parked at the base of the hill just past a farm on a grass verge and followed a well defined path up, still with some snow on the ground. The walk up took me over 2 hours, mostly because I walked straight past the indistinct summit to start with adding an extra 2km to my walk!
When I finally located the summit and the remains of the trigpoint (WAB TP3548) I was quite tired and the walking boots were covered in black mud. In fact this summit is well known to be very boggy and this was evident. Thankfully I had decided to put on waterproof gaiters to keep the trousers dry!
I thankfully found some bales of mesh material at the summit which provided something relatively dry to sit on. I setup the linked dipole held up by the usual 10m fishing pole and the Elecraft KX3.
Before long I was ready to start and sent the usual SMS spot. The 40m SSB QSO’s started to flood in with Michael G0POT/P being the first. After 36 minutes I had completed 24 contacts and decided to pack up due to the relentless cold wind blowing up on Waun Fach. Here are the QSO’s:
Time | Call | Band |
13:49z | G0POT/P | 7MHz |
13:53z | G6TUH | 7MHz |
13:54z | G0VWP | 7MHz |
13:57z | 2E0VOV | 7MHz |
13:58z | G4AFI | 7MHz |
13:59z | G6WRW | 7MHz |
14:02z | G3RDQ | 7MHz |
14:04z | M0MDA | 7MHz |
14:06z | M0IML | 7MHz |
14:07z | M6KVJ | 7MHz |
14:08z | ON4VT | 7MHz |
14:09z | G4AAH | 7MHz |
14:10z | G0ELJ | 7MHz |
14:12z | M0JLA | 7MHz |
14:15z | GM0AXY | 7MHz |
14:16z | G0TRB | 7MHz |
14:18z | M3FEH | 7MHz |
14:20z | G3VCG | 7MHz |
14:21z | G8MIA | 7MHz |
14:22z | DJ6OK | 7MHz |
14:23z | M0TTE | 7MHz |
14:24z | M3ZCB | 7MHz |
14:25z | M1MAJ | 7MHz |
14:26z | GM4YMM | 7MHz |
I descended from the summit and enjoyed the walk back to the car which offers great views into the valley. Upon reaching the car I headed for the summits Mynydd Troed (GW/SW-009) and Mynydd Llangorse (GW/SW-015) which are located right next to each other and I much preferred these to the stark and boggy summit of Waun Fach.