Since the last time I hiked the western Isle of Wight circuit, three new parks have popped up in the area: GB-5384 Afton Marsh, GB-5386 Isle of Wight Coast Path and GB-5390 Headon Warren & West High Down SSSI. Of course I’d have to complete the route again, and on a lovely sunny April day too—what a shame!

Choice of equipment was difficult for this trip. On my previous circuit I’d only brought a QRP HF radio and a wire antenna to save some weight, and did manage to complete the activations of all three spots I tried. However, this time I had two extra complications:

1. Afton Marsh has virtually no open space at all, being just a concrete path that is raised very slightly (if at all) above the surrounding marshland. It’s not a “my boots will probably cope” marsh either; even in late April it is fully under a few inches of water with the path itself underwater in places. There is a thin strip of grass along the road in the middle, with very restricted space: we could cope with the JPC-12, so long as we stopped transmitting each time a walker passed by, but there would not be space for a dipole.
2. I imagined that my chosen spot at the Needles would be very popular, qualifying as it did for POTA, WWFF, UKBOTA, WCA, ARLHS, IOTA and being a rare WAB square, SZ28. To do it justice, I really wanted to bring the 100W kit.

All that added up to a lot of weight, so I took advantage of my logging assistant still being at home, and we set of together, both carrying around 8kg packs.

1100-1130Z: Afton Marsh

Once again we caught the 1000 local time (0900Z) ferry from Lymington to Yarmouth, then hiked down the side of the river Yar until we reached Afton Marsh.

As I’d expected from photos and Street View, there was indeed no space bar the grassy section next to the road, though at least we were afforded a bench to operate from.

Expecting the second activation of the day to be “the big one”, we kept things quick here, having 12 brief QSOs on the 20m band while we had our lunch. After that, we swiftly packed up, headed down to Freshwater Bay, then turned west for the long walk across Tennyson Down to the Needles.

1345-1500Z: The Needles

Now Tennyson Down has an abundance of open space in which to set up an amateur radio antenna, even the 40m dipole. But having promised the WAB folks that we would operate from the only small section of land inside the SZ28 square, this didn’t leave us with a lot of options.

This is a busy part of the world, even outside of the normal tourist season, since the Needles is a major attraction on the island and the bus drops visitors off only a few metres from our chosen activation spot. There were a lot of people wandering around. It’s surprising how many tourists will see an an antenna and just… walk up and touch it?? (There were a lot of silences from me while I waited for people to move out of RADHAZ range, or at least come and talk to me!)

As the “big one” of the day, being so close to the Isle of Wight Coast Path allowed us to be not just in GB-5390 Headon Warren & West High Down SSSI, GB-0116 IOW Downs Conservation Reserve and GB-0234 IOW National Landscape, but also GB-5386 IOW Coast Path and GB-0711 King Charles III England Coast Path; a POTA 5-fer. For WWFF, two references could apply, and I picked GFF-0256 IOW National Landscape.

Down this end of the headland we also have the bunker associated with B/G-2440 Needles Radar Station:

B/G-1563 WW2 Command Post, The Needles (now with the Coastwatch station built on top):

ARLHS lighthouse ENG 083 The Needles, and WCA castle G-01425 The Needles Old Battery:

Being the Isle of Wight, this also qualifies for IOTA as EU-120 English Coastal Islands. So between POTA, WWFF, UKBOTA, WCA, ARLHS, IOTA and WAB, I had a lot of references to read out on the air!

By happy coincidence, 25th April is also the birthday of radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi, celebrated as International Marconi Day. Each year (as I found out yesterday!) many amateur radio Special Event Stations are set up at sites around the world associated with the work of Marconi and his company. The site of the former Alum Bay Hotel, just 500m down the road, was the site of Marconi’s first permanent ship-to-shore telegraphy station, and today is marked with this memorial stone.

I contemplated registering for a Special Event Station callsign while we were on our way, but in the end decided not to. Probably a good thing, because as it turns out I wasn’t the only one thinking of Marconi operating from this site—the Isle of Wight Radio Society were putting on a station as well, with a proper organised setup just down the road. G3SKY gave me a call while I was activating, for which I recorded a memorable signal report of S9+50!

We did try to pop down to see them at the end of the day, but the radio pile-up kept coming for us and by the time we reached Alum Bay around 1645 local time, it looked like their station had already packed up and gone. Maybe next year!

Back up on the headland, the 40m band was about as busy as I’d ever heard it. We had to find new frequencies a few times, and even then I’m sure we had a station 1kHz up and another 1kHz down at some points. Filter width set to minimum!

By the time we had got through 50 or so QSOs, it was getting towards 1600 local time, and after a brief gap in calls I decided it was a good idea to pack up the station. Sadly we didn’t make it onto 20m from this spot; if we had we’d have been there for hours I expect! But our ferry back to the mainland was scheduled for 1805 local, allowing only two hours—we were already late enough that we couldn’t guarantee being able to walk it in time, and would have to catch the bus.

En route to Alum Bay for our attempt to meet up with the IOWRS, we also swung by my favourite overlooked feature of the Needles headland: the former rocket test site.

There are plenty of signs directing tourists to the Old Battery and to viewpoints where they can see the Needles lighthouse, but this giant concrete structure remains completely un-signposted as far as I can tell. There’s no information boards or anything indicating that this giant curved concrete structure was once a secret test site for the UK’s first ballistic rocket programme. It’s not even a UKBOTA bunker, though I will try to rectify that soon!

To cap off the day up on the headland, as we explored the rocket site, nothing less than a Spitfire circled overhead.

And if one aging classic vehicle wasn’t enough, back at the ferry terminal, three others were waiting in the queue, including a 1937 Austin Seven and this 1911 Ford Model T.

What a day it was! From a lunch and a quick activation in a marsh, to a POTA-WWFF-bunker-lighthouse-castle-island-rare-WAB activation, a rocket test site, vintage planes and cars, and accidentally taking part in International Marconi Day, with 9 miles walked and 21k steps. Phew!

Thanks to all our contacts from both locations today. See you on the air again next time!