Starting from the Donview car park on the minor road along the north side of the River Don, just south of Bennachie, four members of the Scottish Consulate Amateur Radio Club began their climb of Millstone Hill. A 320-meter ascent to the peak, to reach 410 meters above sea level.

48 or so minutes later everyone had arrived at the top and began to set up radio stations. Ed MM6MVP had his X1M although unfortunately, the antenna had broken. Iain MM0ROR made the first contact via the GB3GN repeater in Banchory with 2M0DOI but being via a repeater didn’t qualify for SOTA.

During this time Hibby 2M0HIB had been busy getting his mast and dipole up and had found a small shelter to hide out of the wind. He had already activated this peak earlier in the year, so Ed moved over to this station and worked 5 contacts, enough to count for SOTA points.

Now that we were all sufficiently chilled from the wind, it was time to head back down to the car park.

This year’s SSB Field Day contest was held on the 5th and 6th of September and ran from 1300 to 1300 UTC. MS0SCZ is not an RSGB-affiliated society (we don’t want to handle money at all to keep it simple) and the contest was changed to single-operator only due to the ongoing global pandemic. For these reasons we did not officially enter the contest, but we still played along for a day anyway.

We gathered at a location not far from 57North Hacklab and established a small camp. The main feature was Ed MM6MVP’s tent with enough room to stand in, furnished with a table and some benches. On the table, Hibby 2M0HIB’s Yaesu FT-891 and Ed’s leisure battery.

With the antenna erected and the station set up, we began making contacts. In addition to Ed and Hibby, Ana MM0YSO and Iain MM0ROR also operated the station to make a total of 19 contacts by the end of the day. We have uploaded the log to QRZ.com and also uploaded to the RSGB as a checklog.

To keep ourselves nourished throughout the event, Iain also operated a BBQ to produce burgers for the operators, and they were tasty.

Once again we set up the Scottish Consulate assembly in the Milliways cluster. It was good to hang out again with our international friends. We caught up with the Irish Embassy (sharing a border), Freeside and the Chaos Coven.

We supervised the proceedings of the leaking of whisky to ensure proper procedure was followed. On Day 3, we held the regular buckfast tasting session.

To wrap up, dinner with friends from Tog hackerspace and LoveLace Space.