Activity Summary | Weather |
Date: 19th September 2025 Distance: 12.69 km Ascent: 326m Max Altitude: 368m Moving time: 2:56 Total time: 4:14 | Rainy Temperature 15 ℃ Humidity 90% Feels like 15 ℃ Wind Speed 5.4 km/h Wind Direction WSW |
Activation Summary
Having only managed 2 of my 3 planned SOTA activations whilst on our motorhome holiday in Ireland, I was keen to squeeze in another activation before heading for home. Slievenamuck lies to the North of the Glen of Aherlow caravan site where we were staying. The walk is a 12km loop, although fairly easy with only 326m of ascent, it is a forest walk and I do prefer a walk with a view. On the plus side, you do get to activate next a Neolithic Tomb, also known as a Dolman. The route mainly follows the way marked Dolmon Loop through forest tracks. When the summit is reached there is a small clearing where you will see the Neolithic Tomb and the trig pillar close to each other. Last year when I activated this summit there was a panic bench, but this has now been removed, so I had to make use of the wall for my shack.
There isn’t much of a view from this summit, but as always here is the 360 video, so you can see the summit view for yourself.
It was drizzling when I started setting up, but very little wind, so I used my DD Tarps Magic Carpet, suspended from my walking poles to keep my gear dry.
I setup on 20m’s using the telescopic 1/4 wave whip and x6100. Again 20m band was very active and I found a clear frequency on 14.262 MHz and self spotted. I had 11 QSO’s in the log before all of the callers had been worked on 20m. I did struggle with the some of the weak stations and actually couldn’t log some stations, as it was not possible to hear my report or their full callsign. This is one of the compromises of the using x6100, the receive sensitivity and filtering is not as good as my IC705. I did try the 40m loading coil on the telescopic whip and managed 2 more QSO’s on 40m. I have never really had much luck with the telescope whip on 40m. In total I managed 13 QSO’s including 2 summit to summits.
After packing away my HF gear I gave 2m a quick try, but consistent with this Ireland trip I didn’t manage any QSO’s on 2m. Once everything had been packed away, and checked that I had left only footprints, I continued walking on the Dolmon loop eventually descending back to the campsite.
Equipment Used
- Xiegu x6100
- Yaesu FT65
- 20m telescopic 1/4 wave antenna
- 40m loading coil
- SRH770 (BNC) 2m antenna
- 4000 mAHr LifePo4 Battery pack
- PoLo logging app on iPad mini