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POTA Activation Report: Holton Heath

Written on Saturday 16 Nov 2024

Ever since our first Brownsea Island activation I’ve been thinking of ticking off other nearby parks that are still sat unactivated. A recent update added pretty much every scrap of green space in Christchurch, but all of those were quickly snapped up. A weird outlier nearby, though, is GB-0093 Dorset...

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POTA Activation Report: River Hamble Country Park

Written on Tuesday 12 Nov 2024

My work off-site finished at lunchtime, leaving me with little to do besides drive most of the M27 and sit around at home. A better idea: do some radio nerd stuff in a field instead. The BBQ field at River Hamble Country Park GB-2465, River Hamble Country Park is sited...

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POTA Activation Report: Poor Common

Written on Thursday 31 Oct 2024

There are dozens, if not hundreds of places in the UK called “Poor Common”; land granted many centuries ago by the local Lord to ordinary people so that they had somewhere to graze their livestock. But this one, GB-1723 Poor Common Nature Reserve is the only one in the POTA...

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POTA Activation Report: Canford Cliffs

Written on Monday 28 Oct 2024

It’s a week of leave from work, I have nothing urgent to do, and so: my second POTA activation in two days! This one had a very different feel to Saturday’s sunny afternoon activation. The day dawned damp and windy, but at least not actively raining—sadly, that was to change...

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POTA Activation Report: Hengistbury Head

Written on Saturday 26 Oct 2024

After JOTA, where my daughter casually snagged her first transatlantic SSB contact, I decided to set myself a goal: by the end of the year, I was going to have my first transatlantic POTA park-to-park. Jim, N4JAW told me he thought it’d be easy, but I wasn’t entirely sure—he is...

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Jamboree on the Air 2024

Written on Saturday 19 Oct 2024

It’s been a year since my daughter, a young leader at the local Scout troop, helped with JOTA/JOTI and remarked that they were only really doing the “on the internet” side of it, not the “on the air” side. And that we should fix that. I didn’t have the Full...

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POTA Activation Report: Upton Heath

Written on Sunday 13 Oct 2024

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by,It basically looped back on itself and it was quite muddy.Probably should have stuck with the road all those other folks took."—Robert Frost, POTA Activator (probably) It’s October, out on the heath. The days start cold now,...

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PAC-12 / JPC-12 Antenna Review

Written on Saturday 28 Sep 2024

Since I started doing POTA earlier this year, my go-to antenna has been a 20/40m dipole in an inverted-V configuration, the central pole being about 6m high. I like the simplicity and efficiency of a dipole, along with the knowledge that it was cut to the right resonant frequencies and...

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POTA Activation Report: The New Forest

Written on Monday 26 Aug 2024

With an area of over 200 square miles, 175,000 permanent residents and over 15 million tourists a year, GB-0112: New Forest National Park feels like one of the cheaper POTA locations; much like the “Dorset National Landscape” which covers near half my county. Nevertheless, it’s one of the local spots...

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The Great Shack QRM Hunt (2024 Edition)

Written on Saturday 17 Aug 2024

A year or so ago, being unhappy with the large amount of noise I saw when playing radio from home (particularly on the 40-metre band), I went on a hunt for the causes. I turned off everything I could, bar the radio and its power supply, jumped around the band...

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