G5LSI, M7GAX and I were heading up to Durham & District Amateur Radio Society (G4EUZ) radio rally at Bowburn. Radio rallies are a mixture of a “bring and buy” sale, car boot and market stalls. They certainly show off the demographics of the hobby, which shows we really need to be more diverse, or the hobby will die out but you can normally get a good bacon buttie and cup of tea at them.
We had a mooch around and bought some bits that would have been expensive to ship and then had a brew and bite to eat and caught up with some friends who were also up for the rally.
Whist planning to come to the rally we had said we would go and do a POTA whilst up there, so we headed back to the car, fired up the sat nav and went to find GB-0001 Cassop Vale National Nature Reserve.
We found a decent place to park within the boundaries of the park and started to get set up. G5LSI set up the HF with a magmount and hamsticks whilst M7GAX and I set up a mast with a homemade 2m antenna on it.
We got some 2m contacts from people who had been at the rally which was kind of cool and then got some good contacts into EU and even the US.
It was a bit cold and damp there so we did not stay to long but still had a good time.
| Operation Details |
| Park: https://pota.app/#/park/GB-0001 Grid square: IO94gr WAB square: NZ33 |
| Working Conditions |
| Icom IC-7100 Icom IC-705 20m Hamstick Sotabeams tactical mini Ham2K Polo |
| Operation Totals |
| 14 QSOs 7 DXCC Entities 4 P2P 2 Band and 2 modes 20m – 10 SSB 2m – 4 FM |
