XLY was away and I was home alone with the hounds. It was a lovely day and I was pondering doing an activation, I’ve taken Obi out before on activations, so I knew he was going to be OK, but I’ve never taken Tala to an activation when it’s just me and I was a little apprehensive but figured nothing ventured nothing gained and packed up my radio kit, put the dogs on the leads and set off to the Willows.
I got there and it was empty so I let dogs go for a run whilst I set up the radio and antenna. The ground was hard and I had an issue getting the pegs in to hold the mast up but I manged to with a bit of brute force.
I was planning to start on HF and I had brought my 2m Flowerpot antenna to use after the HF but not sure why I decided to start with 2m.
The way I do POTA and SOTA on 2m is to find a free frequency and start calling and spot myself if I can and then go back to the calling channel and call:
CQ POTA CQ POTA this is M0LZN calling CQ POTA and listening on (free frequency), M0LZN on (free frequency).
Then I go back to the free frequency and call normally. It seems to work quite well.
It was quite slow getting the contacts, but they trickled in, but it was a nice day and the sun was warm.
During one call I saw Tala dart off then suddenly she was the other side of the fence, Oh Crap! Had to tell the contact to wait a sec whilst I went to get the dog. I started to head towards her but she ran around the fence and then found a hole by the gate and came back, phew. Time to put her back on the lead. During all this Obi was lying there enjoying the sun.
Managed to get 10 in the log so was thinking I would pack up and not bother with HF so I could take the dogs for walk, as they had been good. I gave it one more call and got Al M7FPX which was nice.
Packed up the radio, antenna and mast and took the dogs on the rest of the walk.
A lovely day out.
| Operation Details |
| Park: https://pota.app/#/park/GB-0021 Grid square: IO93lt WAB square: SE63 |
| Working Conditions |
| Icom IC-705 Sotabeams tactical mini 2m Flower Pot Antenna Ham2K Polo |
| Operation Totals |
| 11 QSOs 1 DXCC Entities 1 Band and 1 modes 2m – 11 FM |
