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 much younger self thought of Avon Heath as very much the B-tier of parks. (It doesn’t have a miniature railway, so it was clearly inferior.) But as I got older, I appreciated more the peace of exploring the further reaches of the forest and the heath. It’s come on a lot over the years—there is a cafe and a play park here now, though sadly the giant outdoor chess sets have been relegated to just being some oddly coloured paving slabs amongst the picnic tables. Child-me was pretty sure he once saw a pine marten here, though it’s far enough outside their range that adult-me has doubts, and perhaps it was just a huge squirrel. We definitely came within about 5 metres of a buzzard here last year though!

My favourite place in the park is an area of grass pretty much right in the middle. The forest gives way to heathland, then around the side of a hill on the heath it opens out suddenly into grass with one tree in the middle.

If you want to find it, just follow the purple trail—you’ll know it when you see it. Unfortunately it’s a popular trail, so passers-by are frequent, but that’s the case everywhere here. Without traipsing off into the heath and disturbing the habitat of the animals there, all the potential activation spots are along one or other of the trails.

My favourite spot was also in use today by these cattle, so I set up shop a bit further up the path in the next clearing.

There were a bunch of OARC folks on the air today, so I started on 40 metres looking for some UK & Ireland contacts, though the quarter-wave vertical isn’t ideal for the job. Unfortunately the band was wall-to-wall “CQ Contest” from the ongoing RSGB and Hungarian contests.

It was over to 20 metres then, where as usual after a couple of park-to-parks, the pileup delivered 40-or-so QSOs including OARCer Seb 2E0PHG, one transatlantic with Stuart VE9CF, and a 2-operator P2P in Romania with YO3BEE and YO3DYL. EI2OARC did try to give me a P2P call, but while they could hear me, I unfortunately could not hear them.

The 10 metre band was slower going, but I managed 15 QSOs there in the end, including Alex KR1ST, and probably the highlight of the day which was a P2P with Kenneth 8P5KM in Barbados (a new DXCC entity for me). I had hoped to catch the Halifax Amateur Radio Club activating as VE0MMA, but sadly didn’t spot them on the air until after I’d left the park.

Not a bad haul in the end though, 59 contacts in the log and one park successfully supported.

Many thanks to all my contacts this afternoon. See you on the air next time!