After reading Radcom, the RSGB month magazine I found out about Former Colliery Sites on the Air (FCSOTA). Living where I do there are a lot of former colliery sites so I thought this could be a good event to support.
I decided on going to St Adains which is an RSPB site now but was an open cast mine in its time. The land was flooded in 1988, after the riverbank collapsed and that formed the lakes and ponds there. It’s also a POTA which kind of swayed my choice.
Drove down and decided to park on the road as the car park closes at 20:00 and did not want to get the car locked in there. Had all my kit in the bag so it was an easy walk into the park. I found a good spot with a lovely view and impressive backdrop.
The backdrop is “Oddball”, a walking dragline which was used to mine the coal.
I got set up on the bench and started calling CQ FCSOTA and got 11 2m contacts. Never activated a park just on 2m before so I was really happy.
As it was a nice evening, I tried HF too and got 3 contacts. The HF bands were not great but having already activated on FM I didn’t mind.
| Operation Details |
| Park: https://pota.app/#/park/GB-0634 Grid square: IO93hs WAB square: SE32 |
| Working Conditions |
| Icom IC-705 Icom AH-705 Sotabeams tactical mini Sotabeams EFLW Ham2K Polo |
| Operation Totals |
| 14 QSOs 4 DXCC Entities 3 Band and 2 modes 20m – 2 SSB 15m – 1 SSB 2m – 11 FM |
