SOTA Activation of Black Mountain (GW/SW-041)

On the 22nd of March I woke up at my cosy B&B after activating 3 summits the day before. I had a full Welsh breakfast and planned my two summits for the day before driving home.

First up was the Black Mountain (GW/SW-041) which offered 6 points + 3 winter bonus points. The drive here was easy, except for when I met an assortment of animals heading down the road towards me:

Thankfully the cow went around my car and not over it!

Unexpected hazard on road

I parked at the base of the summit which was empty as it was early (but packed when I came back after the activation!):

View up to Black Mountain from car park

The walk up was initially hard but it soon levelled out as I passed the trig point. This didn’t appear to be within the activation zone, so I carried on up to the peak in the distance.

After arriving I setup just off the Offa’s Dyke path and was appreciating a warm and sunny day in March after a long winter. I operated on both 40m and 20m making 67 QSO’s in 1 hour and 28 minutes of operation. I expected this to be a quick activation but the sun was too nice to rush it!

I was please to get two US stations in the log as well as AC1Z and AA1VX came in at good strength.

Here’s the full log:

After spending longer than expected on this one summit I had to cut my plans for the rest of the day down to just one more summit and proceeded to drive over to troubling named Ysgyryd Fawr (GW/SW-016).

I enjoyed this summit and the views are quite incredible, it is quite busy so set up out of the way!

Panorama of local surroundings

It turned out nice!