Found my glasses with a chunk out of the lens, think it might have been the radio puppy, as radio dog knows better, so I need to head into Selby and Specsavers and see what they could do and what it was going to cost. We had nothing else planned for the morning so I thought I might try and get a POTA activation in too.
Specsavers said it would be a week and £40 so not to bad, just have to cope with lens not working fully for a week so that’s not too bad. After that I got back to the car and headed off to the canal carpark, it was quite busy when I got there, only a couple of spaces left. The carpark was on the trails for both parks and I had brought the drive on stand but I don’t like to work from a car if I can help it, especially in a car park. So I got my rucksack and headed off the down the tow path.
In less than 100 meter I found a promising location, a bit of hard standing, so I headed back to the car to grab my camping chair as the ground was wet and I did not fancy sitting on it. The plan in my head was to find a bench along the tow path, but this was better and I would not be in the way of walkers.
Got back to the hard standing and set my chair up and attached the mast to the metal railings with 2 bungee cords, attached the antenna loop to the top of the mast and pulled the mast up. With the mast up I walked the antenna out and pegged it out and came back and decide to attach the tuner to the mast with Velcro cable ties. When I had walked the antenna out the tuner was on the ground with the antenna attached so now there was a bit of slack, so back out to the end to take in the slack, trying to find the right place for the peg put a bit of tension on the antenna and mast and it bent just a little bit ( this will be important later on)
Back to chair, and attach the radio to the tuner, turn the radio on and get Polo ready with the activation details. From Polo I saw Richard MM7TKU was activating a park in Scotland so thought I would hunt him first and got him, bonus he was in a 3fr whilst I was in 2fr.
I then found myself a free frequence on 40M and got myself spotted, almost straight away Alex PD3RL came back to. Then a few more English stations including a P2P G0HRC Holsworthy Amateur Radio Club and then Thomas SM3NRY, very impressed to get to Sweden on 5W. After that came Don G0RQL, didn’t manage to have big chat with him as he had a bit of QSB at his end.
Decided to try some hunting myself got a mix of Parks and Bunkers and then got John M8JJS with a P2P at his local park. Have hunted him a lot. Switched to 20M and hunted a Spanish station then found a free frequency and called CQ.
Got hunted by another activator, this time a dual operator in Poland Andrzej SP8QC and Urszula SP8ULA then hunted by Jack OH3GZ which was my furthest contact for the activation.
After this I went back to hunting and got some SOTA and a few more P2P.
Was starting to get a little cold and hungry so called it day. First disconnect the radio from the tuner and put the radio away. Next went over to the mast and unplugged the antenna from it and let go of the banana plug. As the wire and mast was under a little tension, the end of the wire with the plug went shooting in to the air up the mast until it hit the little plastic antenna holder, it must have it it with some force, as it pulled of the banana plug which went sailing through the air and landed in the canal with plop! I had a good laugh at that. Got the rest of the kit packed away without incident and headed back to the car and then home.
| Operation Details |
| Park: https://pota.app/#/park/GB-3750 https://pota.app/#/park/GB-1240 Grid square: IO93kr WAB square: SE63 |
| Working Conditions |
| Icom IC-705 Icom AH-705 Sotabeams tactical mini Sotabeams EFLW Ham2K Polo |
| Operation Totals |
| 31QSOs 11 DXCC Entities 36 P2P 2 SOTA hunted 2 Band and 1 mode 40m – 21 SSB 20m – 10 SSB |
