I would like to clarify that this was not technically my first attempt at POTA, I had previously attempted to activate Stanmore Park G-0535, however that neatly coincided with the sun exploding and rendering HF communications pretty much useless. Certainly no hope with QRP.
So as the Easter weekend rolled around we had not really made any plans. Primarily because every time we attempted to plan a weekend away over the last year or so, you could pretty much guarantee that we would end up with continual rain. However, as the weekend drew closer, the Met Office seemed pretty convinced that we were going to experience that most unusual of phenomena, a sunny bank holiday.
So with zero plans and only a few days to go, Claire and I decided that we should walk a section of the South Downs Way. When the plan was floated I stealthily checked the route and discovered a number of potential spots for playing some radio.
Although we had decided to walk the route from the beginning we also decided that Winchester was not somewhere we had any particular desire in walking through. Fighting her completionist tendencies, Claire located a car park just outside of Winchester which was directly on the South Downs Way, and a B and B some 16 miles further down the route.
In addition to packing the usual hiking paraphernalia for an overnight hike (although finding a B and B cut our loads down dramatically due to the lack of tents, sleeping bags etc) I packed the lightest HF setup I could put together. My trusty FT-818, superlight EFWH covering 80,40,20,15 and 10, battery, mic and speech compressor, Waterproof notebook, and pencil, SOTA beams carbos pole and ground spike. I also threw in a Slim Jim for 2m and my FT-3 and RH-770 telescopic antenna. Total weight of radio equipment, around 3kg.
The first day was due to be a fairly long hike, so I didn’t anticipate being able to play any radio but I got lucky and we made better than expected progress. Claire was happy to take an hour’s break on Old Winchester Hill Nature Reserve. There are a lot of signs telling you what you can’t do here which is pretty much anything that vaguely resembles fun. I did, however, manage to find a spot on the fence line to set up my antenna. Conditions weren’t amazon on 40m with very little inter-g. A quick spot on the did succeed in netting me 9 contacts on 40m and a further 3 on 20m before Claire began to complain about getting cold and we had to pack up and move on. For the first time out portable, I met another Ham, 2 in fact brothers who were out hiking. Alas, I can’t remember their callsigns and failed to write them down. But still, it made a change from the usual ‘are you fishing’ type questions.
I had intended to continue the radio fun at our accommodation, but after the walk and a solid meal, I was well and truly done so a good night’s sleep was all I got there.
The next day was due to be much shorter, with us only having to complete approximately 6 miles to get to our finish point so I had high hopes of being able to squeeze in some radio time. The site I really wanted to activate was Bluster Hill, which would be a combined SOTA, POTA, and WWFF activation.
After a leisurely breakfast and plenty of coffee, we made it to the summit after only about an hour and a half of walking and were lucky to have glorious sunshine.
Once I was set up and had checked all of the equipment was functioning I messaged a few mates on Whatsapp who were also out portable. MATT 2E0FVO found me pretty much straight away and we were able to have an extended QSO and play with different power settings successfully completing a QSO using 2.5w each. Not too shabby, Scot 2E0WWV was a booming 5/8 to me but was unable to pull me out of the noise so we were unable to make the QSO stick.
After that, I stayed on frequency for just over an hour and was able to log a total of 30 contacts on 40m and 1 on 2. In the end, I gave up as the band was getting more crowded and people were splattering onto my frequency. I ended up moving up the band a couple of times but eventually ran out of places to retreat too. It was a shame because I was getting close to logging the 44 contacts necessary to qualify for the WWFF but alas it wasn’t to be. Still in the end I was able to log about 45 contacts over the course of the weekend and activate a number of POTA references and grab a few more SOTA points.
Thanks for reading and a big thank you to everyone who called in while I was out portable and made the activations possible.
Thanks for reading.
