Will 2E0WTI suggested a met up before Christmas at Skipwith which is one of our favourite locations for group activations.
We planned to arrive at 09:00 and Will had arrived already at our usual spot and had a brew on already. Nice to start with a cup of coffee as the car had said it was 4 degrees C on the drive in to the park.
We had a quick chat about what antenna to use and decided to use my Sotabeams Band Hopper III. I got the drive on mount set up and put the mast in and got the antenna set up for 40 meters.
With a little table for the radio to go on and the chairs out we found a free frequency, called CQ and spotted ourselves on POTA and WWBOTA and then pile up started!
Will was the primary operator, and I was the secondary. He did a cracking job working through the pile up. There were some regular POTA hunters chasing us; Alex PD3RL, Dom G0RQL, Thomas F4FTJ and Dennis EI6IF. It always nice to familiar contacts when doing an activation.
Neil M0NJH arrived and joined us at the table, he brought his Elecraft KX2 so we could try some morse. We swapped bands to 20m to try and hunt some SOTA CW but could not hear them strongly, so we swapped back to 40m. Neil got some contacts and talked us through the process of CW QSO which was a cool and the KX2 is lovely portable radio.
Richard G4FBA popped down to say hello and see how we had got on. We had a quick chat and then he had to get on. We decided to call it day too as we were getting cold and sitting still for 3 hours my feet were like ice blocks even with thick socks and walking boots.
Any day and a good last activation for the year. Here’s to many more next year.
| Operation Details |
| Park: https://pota.app/#/park/GB-0021 Grid square: IO93lt WAB square: SE63 |
| Working Conditions |
| Yaseu FT891 Sotabeams tactical mini Sotabeams band hopper III Ham2K Polo |
| Operation Totals |
| 43 QSOs 6 DXCC Entities 1 P2P 3 B2B 1 Band and 1 mode 40m – 43 SSB |
