Blog Archive — 2025

"CQ Lighthouse!": ILLW 2025 and the Great Portland Rove

Written on Sunday 17 Aug 2025

This one had been in the calendar for a while. The third week in August is International Lighthouse & Lightship weekend, an annual activity where amateur radio operators set up portable stations around the coast to celebrate the history of our local beacons. The obvious choice for me was Portland...

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52 Week Ham Radio Challenge Roundup: Weeks 29-32

Written on Friday 8 Aug 2025

If you’ve read the first post in this series or are playing along yourself, you’ll be aware of the 52 Week Ham Radio Challenge. If not, hit up that link for the details! This post covers the challenges from weeks 29-32, which were: Make your own xOTA activation. Make a...

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POTA Activation Report: Shitterton & May's Wood

Written on Tuesday 5 Aug 2025

There are many things to criticise about the British. You might pick our endless complaining about the weather, our supermarket Meal Deal-based cuisine, or the centuries of brutal colonialism. But one thing that’s great about us is that when we give a village an awful name, we will doggedly stick...

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52 Week Ham Radio Challenge Roundup: Weeks 25-28

Written on Sunday 13 Jul 2025

If you’ve read the first post in this series or are playing along yourself, you’ll be aware of the 52 Week Ham Radio Challenge. If not, hit up that link for the details! This post covers the challenges from weeks 25-28, which were: Locate local noise sources in your shack/flat/house....

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Back Here Again: A Return to Win Green, and a Year of Portable Amateur Radio in Review

Written on Sunday 29 Jun 2025

Win Green, the highest point in Cranbourne Chase. From the small copse of trees on top of this hill, you can see for miles in every direction; to Stourhead in the north, towards Southampton in the east, and to the south, all the way to home and the sea. Panorama...

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Flashing OpenGD77 on the Retevis RT-3S

Written on Friday 27 Jun 2025

A while back I purchased a Retevis RT-3S radio, as I wanted to try out the OpenGD77 firmware’s advanced features for working satellites. I have now managed to flash the OpenGD77 firmware onto the radio, thanks to the information detailed on this page, this official thread and this video. However,...

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POTA Activation Report: The River Frome

Written on Monday 23 Jun 2025

GB-2522 River Frome Site of Special Scientific Interest had stood unactivated for around nine months, and had been on my to-do list for almost that long as well. The SSSI stretches all the way from Dorchester to Wareham, but encompasses only a few tiny scraps of riverbank—mostly, it’s just the...

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Bunkerfest 2025: The Hike to the Huff Duff

Written on Monday 16 Jun 2025

Despite Saturday’s poor band conditions on 40m, I was saved from a disappointing activation by the huge number of Bunkerfest stations on the air. But while I was benefitting from Bunkerfest, there was no bunker near my summit, so I wasn’t really contributing. Of course I couldn’t let that stand,...

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OARC SOTA Day 2025: Nine Barrow Down

Written on Sunday 15 Jun 2025

Nearly a year ago, OARC SOTA Day 2024 provided me with the excuse I needed to awkwardly step onto a hill, set up some kit, and start my journey into the world of outdoor amateur radio. I think it’s fair to say that’s been a success. And so when June...

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52 Week Ham Radio Challenge Roundup: Weeks 21-24

Written on Sunday 8 Jun 2025

If you’ve read the first post in this series or are playing along yourself, you’ll be aware of the 52 Week Ham Radio Challenge. If not, hit up that link for the details! This post covers the challenges from weeks 21-24, which were: Create a GNU Radio flowgraph! Simulate an...

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The Casual Outdoor Radio Kit, plus a Return to Hengistbury Head

Written on Tuesday 20 May 2025

Sometimes, outdoor radio is about long self-supported hikes with big rucksacks and madcap races against time. Sometimes it’s about places you’ll likely never visit again, where failure isn’t an option. Sometimes you just need to bring the power, whether for popular activations where many people will want to call, times...

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Activation Report: Purbeck POTA Rove

Written on Thursday 15 May 2025

I got my first POTA "Rover Warthog" award two months ago, on a memorable and very damp all-day adventure around Christchurch, but I got my second last week after work, on a whim. Clearly it was time to set my sights higher, and next up is the "Rhino" award for a 10-park rove...

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52 Week Ham Radio Challenge Roundup: Weeks 17-20

Written on Sunday 11 May 2025

If you’ve read the first post in this series or are playing along yourself, you’ll be aware of the 52 Week Ham Radio Challenge. If not, hit up that link for the details! This post covers the challenges from weeks 17-20, which were: Which VHF/UHF repeater is closest to your...

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Activation Report: Weymouth POTA Rove

Written on Wednesday 7 May 2025

Last week, I took the opportunity presented by good weather and lighter evenings, and activated both the Lodmoor parks in Weymouth. So far so good, but that’s not all Weymouth has to offer the POTA activator—there were still three more to go. And so, the following week… POTA on the...

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Activation Report: West Wight POTA Rove

Written on Monday 5 May 2025

After a long sunny week, I had an excuse to spend a day on the Isle of Wight; hiking, and of course, nerding out with radios. We took the 10am ferry from Lymington to Yarmouth, and from there I set out south along the path by the mudflats of the...

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Summer 'Preview Week' POTA Activations

Written on Friday 2 May 2025

This week in the UK has been like a preview of summer, with temperatures reaching the high 20s and constant sunshine. The urge to get outside has been strong, and of course the urge to bring some Nerd Equipment along with me. I’ve fitted in six Parks on the Air...

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POTA as Ingress

Written on Friday 25 Apr 2025

A conversation on fedi earlier today got me thinking about the idea of turning Parks on the Air into an Ingress-style game. The data is all out there—reference points with defined locations, “most recent activator” data; the POTA API itself is halfway there to the kind of server you would...

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52 Week Ham Radio Challenge Roundup: Weeks 13-16

Written on Sunday 20 Apr 2025

If you’ve read the first post in this series or are playing along yourself, you’ll be aware of the 52 Week Ham Radio Challenge. If not, hit up that link for the details! This post covers the challenges from weeks 13-16, which were: Make a QSO from an unusual location...

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POTA/WWFF Activation Report: Ballard Down

Written on Sunday 20 Apr 2025

This weekend was both POTA’s Support Your Parks Spring event and week 16 of the 52-week Ham Challenge, “Make a contact with a xOTA station”, so naturally it was time for more outdoor radio. I headed up to Ballard Down, GB-0082 for POTA and GFF-0099 for WWFF. And when I...

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POTA/BOTA Activation Report: Greenham Common

Written on Friday 11 Apr 2025

Family stuff saw me in Newbury this morning with three hours to kill and nothing planned. Obviously it was time for more outdoor radio nonsense. While Newbury and the surrounding area have a number of nice-looking parks, I settled on the only one with a cafe, its own amateur radio...

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RaDAR Rally Report, Spring 2025

Written on Sunday 6 Apr 2025

Unless this is your first time reading my blog, you probably know that I like amateur radio and hiking. I’m also a fan of poring over maps, meticulous planning, and madcap races against the clock. I spent months agonising over backpacks, eventually settling on one I could operate my radio...

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POTA Activation Report: Higher Hyde Heath

Written on Tuesday 1 Apr 2025

40 activations into my “POTA phase” and every time I head out, I still start feelling sick, and think about calling it off. I push through it of course, because you have to get out and do these things—the alternative is retreating into my ever-shrinking comfort zone until I never...

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POTA Activation Report: St Catherine's Hill

Written on Saturday 29 Mar 2025

Parks on the Air has, in recent months, turned from a hobby to more of an obsession. I spend too much time thinking about potential future activations, and often dreaming about them too. Case in point, in the early hours of Thursday morning I woke up from a dream that...

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POTA Activation Report: Pinecliff Gardens

Written on Friday 28 Mar 2025

Small, busy town parks aren’t my favourite POTA spots, but GB-4194 Pinecliff Gardens is the last of them that I’d never activated in my town—its time had come to get checked off the list. I’ve actually been here for POTA before, as it’s almost exactly the location I picked for...

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POTA Activation Report: Kingston Great Common

Written on Sunday 23 Mar 2025

With 30 minutes to kill en route to Burley, I decided to hit up GB-0079 Kingston Great Common for some radio nerdery. Although I’ve activated the New Forest National Park before, I’d never been to this bit, so it was another park to tick off the list. Hopefully I’ll return...

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52 Week Ham Radio Challenge Roundup: Weeks 9-12

Written on Saturday 22 Mar 2025

If you’ve read the first post in this series or are playing along yourself, you’ll be aware of the 52 Week Ham Radio Challenge. If not, hit up that link for the details! This post covers the challenges from weeks 9-12, which were: Try to work an FM repeater on...

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Christchurch POTA Rove: Eight Parks in Eight Hours, on Foot!

Written on Friday 14 Mar 2025

As the priory bells tolled twelve noon, I was propped up on a fence, wringing the brackish water from my socks. My boots and trousers were plastered in stinking mud, I was down a shoelace, and I was contemplating how this activation had gone so badly wrong. This was supposed...

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POTA/WWFF Activation Report: Holt Heath

Written on Sunday 9 Mar 2025

Another sunny afternoon on another heath, as Spring comes slowly to life all around me. If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know what to expect from GB-0157/GFF-0101 Holt Heath: heather, gorse, birch trees, sandy paths, and marshes. But now there are flowers, and the first bees, and birdsong that never...

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Hotel Room HF Adventures

Written on Thursday 6 Mar 2025

My portable radio kit that I typically use for POTA and similar is now even more portable, but while there’s now plenty of space in the bag for other kit I might need, it’s definitely a kit that I use to go out and play radio. If radio isn’t the...

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POTA Activation Report: Luscombe Valley

Written on Sunday 2 Mar 2025

“There’s no such thing as a bad day in the Great Blue Sky Shack,” they say, but despite the bright sunshine and the beginnings of Spring all around me, this one started to make me doubt. One of Luscombe Valley’s watercourses With most of Poole’s POTA entities already activated, today...

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POTA Activation Report: Boscombe & Southborne Overcliff

Written on Saturday 22 Feb 2025

I’m continuing to work my way through the Local Nature Reserves recently added to Parks on the Air. It was a fine sunny afternoon, and therefore what better than a trip to Bournemouth East Cliff, otherwise known as GB-4053 Boscombe & Southbourne Overcliff Nature Reserve. I can’t believe I get...

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52 Week Ham Radio Challenge Roundup: Weeks 5-8

Written on Saturday 22 Feb 2025

If you’ve read last month’s post or are playing along yourself, you’ll be aware of the 52 Week Ham Radio Challenge. If not, hit up that link for the details! This post covers the challenges from weeks 5-8, which were: Update your profile on QRZ.com, HamQTH.com, etc. Take part in...

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POTA Activation Report: Iford Meadows

Written on Sunday 16 Feb 2025

A dry Sunday morning offered a chance to clear off another of the local nature reserves that were recently added to Parks on the Air. GB-4054 Iford Meadows Nature Reserve is much prettier in Spring, but like most local nature reserves and commons, Winter sees it looking dreary and muddy....

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New POTA kit for 2025

Written on Sunday 9 Feb 2025

My interest in outdoor portable radio operating started last year and has only grown since then, with my 20th portable outing today and many more planned for this year. With that in mind, it was time to update some of my equipment to make life easier. The actual radio and...

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POTA Activation Report: Pug's Hole

Written on Sunday 9 Feb 2025

If you struggled through last week’s activation report where I wittered on about my childhood, good news! This week is GB-4056 Pug’s Hole, I’ve never been there before and didn’t even know it existed until it popped up on POTA. I parked at the Branksome Hill Road end of the...

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POTA Activation Report: The River Stour

Written on Sunday 2 Feb 2025

If you’re a regular reader, you will probably know that I’ve not moved far from where I grew up, and that in my POTA activation reports I like to talk about the history of the parks and sometimes how they’ve been important in my life. Fair warning about this one...

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52 Week Ham Radio Challenge Roundup: Weeks 1-4

Written on Monday 20 Jan 2025

A new amateur radio activity for this year that you may not be aware of is the “52 Week Ham Radio Challenge”. Coordinated via the website and via a Mastodon bot, it provides 52 challenges for 2025, approximately one a week, for players to work on alongside each other. The...

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POTA Activation Report: Avon Heath Country Park

Written on Saturday 18 Jan 2025

Most of the local POTA parks are just open areas of heathland, but for POTA’s Support Your Parks Winter event, I wanted to choose somewhere I could actually support—in this case largely by paying £5 for parking. This is Avon Heath Country Park, GB-0362. Compared to nearby Moors Valley, my...

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POTA Activation Report: Ham Common

Written on Friday 3 Jan 2025

From my regular childhood haunts, to this place—despite being in my home town, I don’t think I have ever been here before. This is Ham Common, POTA ref. GB-1302, an area of heathland with a large fishing lake and two look-out points to enjoy scenic views of Poole Harbour. And...

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POTA Activation Report: Upton Country Park

Written on Thursday 2 Jan 2025

Since I discovered that POTA had an award for activating in the first week of the new year, naturally I had to kick off 2025 by getting my nerd on in a field. January 1st was a write-off, with wind and warnings in place and a G4 solar storm lighting...

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