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 to live here. This is just ridiculous.

To say this is a popular spot is an understatement. On a sunny Saturday afternoon, with the temperature hitting the teens for the first time this year? Yeah, this place is busy and there’s not a lot of privacy here. I found the most out-of-the-way spot I could, between Chessel Avenue and Keswick Road, but in an hour I had:

• 4 walkers appear from the furze behind me and walk under the antenna without saying a word
• 2 chats with interested dog-walkers, and one very polite bulldog
• 1 chat with a guy whose mate used to import illegal CB radios in the 70s!

Busy or not, you fault the view.

With some open grassland available, I wanted another go with the dipole antenna, and despite the wind blowing in off the sea I had no structural problems with it today. I intended to kick off on 40 metres, but the band was wall-to-wall full of French contest stations, so I switched to 20 where more space was available. Progress there was much better, though it looks like I made the wrong antenna choice after all, as Seb 2E0PHG let me know that 10m was booming—but sadly I didn’t have the antenna for it today.

Mixing things up from usual, I called CQ first today and after a slow start got 43 in the log over about as many minutes; then a quick hunt for park-to-parks gave me five more to round out the day.

Map of contacts from the activation

Wait, where does that line go?

Map of contacts from the activation (zoomed out)

A totally unexpected QSO with Paul NL7V provided my first with Alaska, and my logbook shows that as my 30th US state worked.

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