Not been well the last week so was not sure I was going to get out today or not. Had hoped for a SOTA but was not going to chance it after having a chest infection, there would be other days for the summits. I had a look at the POTA map and found a new park not far away from me that looked like it had no car access, so it was going be a walk in, just the way I like a park.
I set of to the village I was going to park up in, was a nice drive once off the A road. Considering how close it is to my QTH I’ve never been round that area.
I got parked up and picked up my bag and turned on my new SOTA tracker, yes I know I’m not doing a SOTA but this is a APRS tracker and I wanted to have a play with it. It transmits your location every 15 minutes so SOTA hunters can see if you made the summit and start listening.
I took a look at the map and set off walking, I turned into the marina and followed the trail, it wasn’t long before I arrived at the start of the park, but I prefer to have a good walk in to park so I kept walking. Was a nice day for a walk, cool and sunny. The walk mainly was along the river bank.
I knew I was close Acaster Malbis airfield from WW2 and that there was a bunker there for Bunkers On The Air (BOTA) so I checked the map and noticed that there was a small overlap of the 2 activation zones, I had to head of the main path but there was a definite trail I could follow to the overlap area.
I got there and got set the mast and antenna setup. There was a great view of a hall across the river from here. The ground was still wet so I was glad I brought a bivi bag to sit on. I got the radio connected and setup polo for the activation. There was a spot on 40 from a UK ham so I tried to call them and got through on the 3rd attempt, don’t know why buts it nice to start an activation with a P2P.
I then found my own free frequency, spotted myself and called CQ. I had a minute or 2 of nothing and then the calls started to pour in. I was only running 5 watts so was surprised and happy when the 3rd call was ON, I was getting out as far a Belgium and it was not a one off, got a lot more ON along loads of G. Then a D, wow out to Germany, then a couple of F stations. The calls kept coming, it was a wonderful time on the radio. I was starting to get a little cold so thought I should wrap it up. It was a real mix of stations booming in and others so faint it took a couple of goes to get the callsign.
I finally put a call out saying I was going QRT and just through the noise I heard a station trying to call me, ok if they are putting in the effort so am I. It took a few goes but finally got them, Slovakia and me on 5 watts!
I packed up all the kit, had some coffee from my flask to warm me up and set off walking. I had seen on the map if I kept heading south along the river I would get to point I could cut inland and join another path and make it a circular route rather then a there and back.
The other path I saw was part of the old airfield and not sure why, but it made me think of geocaching. I got out my phone and fired up the caching app and saw there was one less then 80 meters away, I’m ashamed to say it took me way longer than it used to, to find the cache but I did. Log signed and on my way. I check the geocaching app and saw the route I was walking had 2 more along it. Managed to find them as well.
By this point I was back on the road and it was not to far back to the car, 7km in total so nice walk, a great time on the radio and some caches found. A very good day. And to top it off I checked the APRS website and the tracker had been picked up and was working.
| Operation Details |
| Park: https://pota.app/#/park/GB-5645 Grid square: IO93kv WAB square: SE54 |
| Working Conditions |
| Icom IC-705 Icom AH-705 Sotabeams tactical mini Sotabeams EFLW Ham2K Polo |
| Operation Totals |
| 43 QSOs 9DXCC Entities 1 P2P 1 Band and 1 mode 40m – 43SSB |
