Glastonbury Tor HEMA Activation
Glastonbury Tor is our local hill, 158m high. This is a HEMA summit G/HSC-006.
I activated it in 2019, Mike 2E0RWW and Matt 2E0FNT have activated it after that. Since 2019 there’s been an initiative by the National Trust to reduce the use of glyphosate on the Tor1 and use volunteers to mechanically remove presistent weeds like thistles. This hasn’t been an unqualified success; the area around the top is quite thistle-tastic.
It’s not a place for a big HF rig, and the thistles and nettles made finding somewhere reasonably out of the way in the activation zone a slight challenge. I used a Yaesu FT3D with a NA-771 antenna, all signals were 59 to the club station about 2km away I picked Friday because it is IoAARC club night, which was just as well since I wasn’t able to raise anyone not from the club on the calling channel. I was on the north-facing side of the ridge, last time I had been on the south-facing side. Four members gave me the four contacts for an activation.
Stations worked, 145.475 MHz FM
| Time UTC | Callsign | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 17:05 | G6UVO | |
| 17:16 | M3MYM | answered on calling channel, QSY 145.475 |
| 17:18 | M7EVM | |
| 17:22 | 2E0FNT |
This was a successful activation, on quite a breezy hilltop. I used the SOTA mic with an earpiece. Wind was about 12mph. I used a Rycote lavalier fur on this mic, which successfully removed the wind noise without reducing the audio level.
The right-angle jack goes to the earpiece, so only one wire needs to go to the rig, a CAIRO cable carrying all connections.
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Facebook historical link from 2019 ↩