Jimmy M3EYP (as MI3EYP/P) on Divis GI/AH-004)

Duo put Irish hills on the map

Northern Ireland (GI) is one of the less active SOTA associations, but not so in the last week of March 2008, when the attentions of SOTA chasers throughout the UK and Europe were focussed on the province. 

Tom Read M1EYP and Jimmy
Read M3EYP - a well-known father-and-son SOTA activating team from Macclesfield in Cheshire - were in Northern Ireland from the 27th to 31st of March. 
 
Their first target was to activating all eleven of the summits in the Antrim Hills (GI/AH) region. Tom had already done 8 of these, and Jimmy had been present on all those expeditions - but before he gained his Foundation Licence, so they all demanded a revisit!  

Starting with Divis GI/AH-004, the first summit of the trip, Tom and Jimmy worked mainly on 80m using a resonant wire dipole arranged as inverted-V, and a Yaesu FT-817. 

Tom primarily used CW, while Jimmy used SSB, and many stations in the UK and around Europe were worked. The AH region was completed on Cross Slieve GI/AH-011 almost two days ahead of schedule.
 
Tom and Jimmy then headed south for a summit in County Armagh - Carrigatuke GI/CA-003, and four in the Mourne Mountains, including Slieve Donard GI/MM-001, Northern Ireland's highest peak at 850m ASL.
 
Over the course of the five days, Tom and Jimmy activated 16 summits, made 315 QSOs and each added 47 points to their SOTA activator scores. 

A full photo-journal of the 'EYP's GI SOTA expedition can be seen at http://tomread.co.uk