Activity Summary | Weather |
Date: 13th September 2025 Distance: 2.52 km Ascent: 124 m Max Altitude: 483 m Moving time: 0:45 Total time: 1:54 | Partly Cloudy Temperature 11 ℃ Humidity 86% Feels like 7 ℃ Wind Speed 22.0 km/h Wind Direction WSW |
Activation Summary
This summit was the first of 3 SOTA summits that I hoped to activate whilst on our motorhome holiday in Ireland. We had booked to stay at a campsite called Bayview Caravan Park on the Gold Coast near Dungarvan, in the county of Waterford. When we arrived at the campsite on Friday, In the distance I could see the summit of Crohaun and the transmitter tower just below its summit. The forecast wasn’t great and so I was pleased that I could still see the summit on Saturday morning as I was about set off just before 10am
As we were staying in our motorhome, I had arranged for a taxi to drop me off at the start of the walk, and pick me up again 2 hours later. The taxi driver dropped me off at the end of the service road, were the route starts on the map below, there is room to park several cars at both ends of the service road.
The walk to the summit was very easy, after passing over the metal stile and following the obvious path, you walk past the transmitter and then the summit. It took just under 20 minutes to reach the summit where I was greeted by the large cross near the trig pillar. Fortunately the weather remained dry, although it was windy.
Once again I took the usual 360 video before setting up my station.
I started on 2m’s using the FT65 with the SRH770 aerial. I self spotted on 145.400, but alas 2m was as I suspected it was going to be, dead as a DoDo. And so after around 10 minutes I setup on 20m with the X6100 and the telescopic 1/4 wave whip.
I put a spot out on 14.280 MHz but something didn’t seem quite right, with no signals showing on the waterfall. Now I do like my x6100 for SOTA, but you do have to know its quirks, and sometimes it goes deaf and it needs a reboot to fix it. Sure enough after a restart the waterfall sprang into life. I managed 10 QSO’s including 4 S2S’s before the callers dried up. I would like to have tried 40m’s but I had to get back down in time for the taxi that was picking me up.
I descended back to the service road at was at my pickup point for the taxi with 20 minutes to spare. A very enjoyable Saturday morning playing SOTA.
Equipment Used
- Xiegu x6100
- Yaesu FT65
- 20m telescopic 1/4 wave antenna
- SRH770 (BNC) 2m antenna
- 6000 mAHr LifePo4 Battery
- PoLo logging app on iPad mini