SOTA Activation of a Bog – Waun Fach (GW/SW-002)

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:

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.

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