To Quote @MM0EFI and the GM0ESS gang, today was a particularly Amateur showing!

Having spent all weekend locked in the curling rink ruining my knees and inflicting mild liver damage in the Aberdeen City Open competition, I needed some outside time away from people to stretch the legs and loosen my knees.

With my teammates/guests shipped off early on account of our quality performance and the days fair drawin’ out now, I found myself with a free afternoon to have a quick run up something nearby before a 1640 sunset! Up the back of Bennachie is a quick steady ascent and in 13 years of living up here I’ve never summited the big hill! Now is as good a time as any. In SOTA terms, this hill is GM/ES-061. In Geographical terms, it’s around 20 miles inland from Aberdeen city here.

I’ve been experimenting with these Aliexpress whips since the end of last year and the forecast wind was low enough to take one into the hills. I cut and terminated 8x 2.5m radials for an effective ground plane last week and wanted to try that against the flat ribbon that it came with.

The ascent was pleasant enough, got to the summit in good time, and out came my Quansheng radio to get the GM/ES-Society on 2m. First my Nagoya whip - called CQ and heard nothing, with general poor reports in WhatsApp I opted to get the slim-g up my aliexpress fibreglass mast.

In an amateur showing last week, I broke the tip of the mast on Cat Law helping 2M0HSK do his first activation due to the wind, and had forgotten this until I summited this week. Squeezing my antenna on was tough, and after many failed attempts to get it up (the mast kept collapsing as I was rushing and not getting the friction hold on each section correctly) and still not hearing anything at all, I changed location and tried again.

In my new position, I received 2M0RVZ 4/4 at best, but he was hearing my 5/9. Similarly GM5ALX and GM4JXP were patiently receiving me loud and clear but I couldn’t hear them at all. I fiddled with settings and decided the receive path of the Quansheng must be fried or sad somehow, but I don’t yet have a full set of diagnostics run.

I’ll take my Anytone on the next hill and compare them against each other I think.

I gave up and moved to HF, getting my whip and new radials into the ground:

Quick to deploy which is what I was after. My new 5m of coax with a choke fitted attached to the radio and we were off to the races - A convenient thing of beauty when it’s up:

I’ve made a single guy with a sotabeams top insulator to brace against wind if need be, but that didn’t need to be used today.

I hit tune, and the G90 spent ages clicking away. In fact, tuning to 14.074, I could only see the famed FT8 signals at S2.

What could be wrong here? Was it my new radials? the whip has behaved before… Minutes turned into tens of minutes playing with everything, and eventually I worked out what was up - my coax only passed signal when I the PL259 connector at the antenna juuuust right. Once I did that, I could take the tuner out the system and work 20 spectacularly well. Until now, I’d been tuning the coax only.

Another Quality Hibby Build Job™️. That’s what’s wrong!

I managed to struggle my way through a touch of QRM and my wonky cable woes to make enough contacts with some very patient chasers and a summit to summit before my frustration at the situation won out, and down the hill I went after a quick pack up period. I managed to beat the sunset - I think if the system had worked fine, I’d have stayed on the hill for sunset.

I think it’s time for a new mast and a coax retermination!