Five more Vosges SOTAs

Last year, for the late May bank holiday, I set myself the challenge of getting 100 SOTA points in the weekend in the Vosges area of eastern France, an area renowned for being an easy place to get lots of points fairly quickly. This year, in May 2019, my challenge was to do 120 points…

Isle of Man SOTAs

This week, I’m on the GT3PYE/P DXpedition to the Isle of Man with the Camb-Hams. As part of the trip, Rob M0VFC, Colin G4ERO and I have been activating all the SOTA summits on the Isle of Man. It’s perfectly possible to do them all in a single day, amassing 18 points from the five…

Snowdonia SOTAs 2019: Cadair Berwyn

After tackling Pen Llithrig on a less-than-successful day yesterday, it was now Easter Sunday. Knowing the traffic would be bad on Monday, I wanted to get in a quick morning walk before heading back to Cambridge in the afternoon, ahead of most of the cars. Cadair Berwyn (GW/NW-012, worth 8 points) fitted the bill perfectly.…

Snowdonia SOTAs 2019: Y Garn and Glyder Fawr

I’ve recently returned from what has become an annual tradition of spending Easter weekend away climbing hills for SOTA. Last year (and admittedly Easter was earlier), the Beast from the East had just hit and I was walking through snow on Pen-Y-Fan. This year, the weather was completely different with bright sunshine, hardly any wind,…

Measuring Technical Debt

Recently I saw a Twitter thread bemoaning the rise of ‘psychological safety’ as a phrase. Not because it isn’t important – it is – but because giving it a name has made it acceptable and risks giving a scapegoat to hide behind. There’s the possibility that just saying ‘My organisation / team doesn’t promote psychological…

Volcano with abandoned houses in foreground

The VP2MUW DXpedition – Montserrat 2018

I’ve spent the last week with Rob M0VFC and Dan M0WUT on a DXpedition to Montserrat as VP2MUW. This post is part-diary, part-informative for anyone who wishes to follow in our footsteps. Travelling to Montserrat Montserrat’s main airport was destroyed by the volcano eruptions in 1997 and 2010. Today, there is just a small airstrip…