Ham Radio on Alex Johnstone

Carn Daimh before Amy

Fri, 03 Oct 2025 22:05:42 +0100

Just a quick outing today, to this little hill up in the Whisky area. It’s on my list to do for the Eastern Scotland (ES) region, and Fraser, MM0EFI, to get a complete. So he came out too, up another hill nearby, although turned out there were some bigger hills between us and our 2m contact was a bit sketchy. Was a nice walk, easy, and took about an hour to get to the top. Surprisingly, there were other people at the top but they didn’t hang about long. I setup by the fence and started with HF. Bands weren’t great due to all these CMEs hitting the Earth but got a couple of contacts on 40m and 20m before Fraser was on 2m.

I could see the rain (with the wind of Storm Amy) coming from the west, so I packed up and headed down. I went back a different way to make it a loop, although it was through fields with cows and quite muddy, but was sheltered from the breeze. I was home in time for school pickup, and the wind and rain had reached us by then. This evening the rain has eased off, but the wind is very gusty, 80 mph here according to the met office. Hopefully, next week I can get out and do a bigger trip before the school holidays come around again. See what the weather is like though.

Morrone summit

Fri, 26 Sep 2025 20:29:23 +0100

Sister is visiting and we went out to this nice hill which overlooks Braemar. Meant we could have tea and cake afterwards. Plus she wanted to look at the Highland tea towels and other tourist tat.

Was pretty windy at the top!

Derry Cairngorm, Ben Macdui and Carn a'Mhaim SOTA and munro outing

Tue, 16 Sep 2025 21:49:06 +0100

A lovely day out in the mountains. I’ve done these two before - Ben Macdui (UK’s second highest mountain) and Carn a’Mhaim, but I wanted to do the walk via Derry Cairngorm - another munro but not SOTA summit.

The weather was lovely, but it was incredibly windy, and at some points it was hard to stand up! Another couple were out and managed some VHF contacts with them, and then two folks from Portland, OR - who are keen SOTA activators over there - are on holiday here and popped up on a nearby hill top. So lots of fun all round.

A big hike, 32km, with about 10km on the bike, and 2,040m of ascent across the three Munros.

Wiv us on the Wyvii

Mon, 08 Sep 2025 22:19:02 +0100

Some more photos from our trip up Ben Wyvis. Weather was pretty good, a couple of minor showers, but mostly it was dry. Unfortunately the cloud came in at the top of Ben Wyvis, we got to see the views but I didn’t take any photos. There isn’t a path between the two summits, so we made our own. Much better than going up and down the tourist track.

Little Wyvis is actually very nice, and has the same great views as its bigger bro, but with the benefit of no-one going there!

We had fun on the moss and heather on our cross country track - Fraser falling into it and I turned around and saw him face first on the ground!

I wrote more on the SOTA discourses. ⛰️