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 my Pinecliff Gardens activation wouldn’t complete the set in my home town, because someone had just added another park to the system. I was sufficiently convinced by my dream that I decided to check out whether it was true or not, and lo and behold… it was?!

The two new parks added this week

It was two parks instead of one, and not the park I dreamt about being added, but still. A freaky coincidence. And therefore also a second scheduled POTA activation on the radar for this weekend.

GB-4630 St Catherine’s Hill is part of the other newly-added reference, GB-4631 Town Common SSSI, so an automatic two-fer. The exact highest spot is almost impossible to find in the woods and the heath, but I found it eventually thanks to OpenStreetMap and some scouting around—and surprised two deer who had chosen the spot to hang out. The whole Town Common site forms a several kilometer long ridge, including Ramsdown and Blackwater hill, that divides the Stour and Avon river valleys; a popular dog-walking location with well defined trails, though many of them are rather steep.

View eastward across the Avon valley

This place was “peak Scouting” when I was a kid. Several times a year, in the winter season when we didn’t sail, we came here for a “wide game” that had us running all over the hills in the dark, on some invented mission. From the top you can see all across the Avon valley to the New Forest in the east, and the twinkling lights of the town and the airport in the west.

This weekend was the CQ WW WPX SSB contest, so I knew what I was walking into here: wall-to-wall “CQ contest” and nowhere on the main bands for a quick “CQ POTA”. So I decided to bring in the big guns… and operate simultaneously on 17 bands including 4G, 5G and DAB radio.

M0TRT Contest QTH

Oh alright, no that wasn’t my operating location. Of course I kept well clear of it, and set up my meagre antenna in the woods around 500m away from the hilltop transmitter.

I didn’t have a lot of time to activate here, and what time I had I preferred to spend exploring the site. So I didn’t bother tuning the antenna for a WARC band, I just stuck to 20 metres and worked through the band as if I were contesting.

20 QSOs were enough for me, with the United Nations Amateur Radio Contest DX Club, 4U1A, the highlight of the activation, and RU9CC the distance record at just over 4000km. I did hear a number of stations from China, Japan and Kazakhstan on the air, but unfortunately despite several responses to their CQs, they couldn’t hear me. I only have those three in my log using FT8, so it would have been nice to have my first SSB QSOs with them. However it wasn’t to be, and I moved on. I did however get my first SSB QSO with Morocco, thanks to CN3A.

Map of contacts from the activation

Most importantly, I had a nice afternoon out in the sun exploring an old childhood haunt. But also I can sleep a little easier for a while, and start planning some more distant and exciting radio adventures. Because—for now—that’s all the POTA references in Poole, Bournemouth and Christchurch activated. With my 40th activation, I have at long last painted the whole town green.

The “new parks” map for my home, complete—for now.

Many thanks to my contacts this afternoon, and best of luck in the contest. See you on the air next time!