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

Written on Sunday 29 June 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 from the top of Win Green

Panorama from the top of Win Green

Unlike many of the other spots I’ve talked about during my amateur radio adventures, I have no particular childhood memories here, and little to say about the history of this particular corner of the world. It remains special to me though, above all other portable radio spots, because this was where it all began.

One year ago today was OARC SOTA Day 2024. We arrived on the hill late morning, as the sun baked the hilltop and Spitfires roared overhead. We unrolled our picnic blanket, set up an antenna, and tentatively took our first steps into the world of portable amateur radio.

It was my first time using amateur radio equipment outside the house, my first Summit on the Air, my first Park on the Air, even my first time nervously trying to make a contact on HF voice. It was just meant to be excuse to test some equipment, really. But the first few QSOs came in, slowly but surely, and with them a rush of adrenaline; a joy at finding a new thing that I loved. I was hooked.

Today, we stood there again, my logging assistant and I. The rush was still there, the anxiety and the joy.

One year later, we were back for my third SOTA activation. Oh yes, and my eighty-seventh POTA.

Map of most of the POTA parks I have activated in the last year

Activated parks over the last year (green)

And what a year it’s been. These have been the highlights for me:

More than anything else, I have enjoyed getting out there, to places new and places I have known forever. I’ve seen hilltops and valleys and woods and fields that I never would have without this hobby. I’ve counted lizards on walls, come face-to-face with deer, been chased by swans, and had horses try to drink my tea. And I’ve come home to reflect, to write about it all, to share local history and childhood memories and QSO maps with an audience I don’t thank enough.

So thank you, all of you, for letting me share my adventures with you.

Logbook and FT-891 radio on a green and yellow polkadot picnic blanket On today’s activation, as it was a year ago: paper logging and the old polkadot picnic blanket.

In time-honoured tradition, here’s my year in portable amateur radio, “by the numbers”:

But back to Win Green, and back to today.

Trig point and Win Green's characteristic clump of trees in the background The trig point and the coppice at Win Green

Win Green remains SOTA summit G/SC-008 but in the past 12 months has also been added to POTA as its own entity, so we would be activating GB-4517 as well as Cranborne Chase itself, GB-0051 for POTA and GFF-0249 for WWFF.

Before we’d even pulled up in the car park, I was eyeballing a large 4x4 vehicle with no less than 5 antennas on top, including what looked like two Ampro HF whips. The driver had the windows rolled up, and I didn’t fancy disturbing him, so we let him be and headed off towards the hill. But we’d gone a whole ten metres before someone else got out of their car, looked at us and said “bands have been rubbish lately, haven’t they?”

I think at that point, there may have been more ham radio operators at Win Green than non-ham radio operators.

This turned out to be David, G4YVM, and after briefly comiserating about band conditions then, we also met him later up on the hillside and had a longer chat about antennas and learning CW.

Just like last year, we were using the FT-891 and Sotabeams linked inverted-V dipole, along with an HT for any 2m FM contacts that might happen. I left the HT on but didn’t hear a lot of activity on the 2m calling channel. In the end, I didn’t bother to make any 2m calls of my own as we were far too busy with the HF kit, but a variety of beeps and bloops let me know that APRS was doing well up on the hill.

Inverted-V dipole antenna in long grass with a bright blue sky above Why would we ever operate from home, when we can have this?

We started the activation on the 20m band, hoping to get some ARRL Field Day action, but sadly we had no North American callers, and when we hunted a few it seemed that we weren’t being heard. Nevertheless our CQ calls netted a pile-up of 31 callers around Europe, until at last a few minutes’ break gave us the chance to switch to 40m.

Again, we blitzed through that, getting another 33 in the log over the course of the next half hour. Honestly, we could have gone on much longer, as there were still plenty of other activator spots to hunt and I’m sure a few more CQ calls would have resulted in more interest. However, we’d had a good hour and a half in the sun, done more than enough to activate for SOTA, POTA and WWFF, and done exactly what we’d set out to do—return to Win Green a year on, wiser and better.

Last time we were here, we eked out 11 QSOs in four hours, all within the UK, and were impressed at how well we’d done. What a difference a year makes!

Map showing lots of coloured markers Map of today’s contacts

So what does the next year hold in store for us?

Over the next few months, I’m hoping to do:

Further afield, one day I’d like to do:

Fingers crossed, a long and exciting future of outdoor radio adventures awaits.

Much larger map showing lots more coloured markers

Map of all my portable contacts from the last 12 months

I’ll finish as I always do, with a huge thank-you to all my contacts over the past year—all 1251 of you. None of this would have been possible without you being there, from Alaska to Indonesia to just down the road, sat by a radio taking my call. Thank you so much.

Here’s to another year!

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