With an area of over 200 square miles, 175,000 permanent residents and over 15 million tourists a year, GB-0112: New Forest National Park feels like one of the cheaper POTA locations; much like the “Dorset National Landscape” which covers near half my county. Nevertheless, it’s one of the local spots we hadn’t yet checked off our list, so off we went on a warm and breezy Bank Holiday afternoon.

Since the park is so big, we were spoiled for choice of location to set up our station. Only a quarter of the New Forest park area is actually forest, with the rest split between heathland, grassland and the various towns and villages. I picked Horseshoe Bottom, a place I remember from childhood visits which has a free car park, a wide grassy area, and a ridge with good visibility all around.

Horseshoe Bottom in the New Forest

The ridge forms part of the old railway that used to connect Southampton and Dorchester, dismantled in the 1960s and now used as a popular walking and cycling trail. Something in my brain always suggests a hilltop as a good location for an antenna, regardless of it not making the slightest difference for shortwave, so up we went, despite the wind—a decision I would later come to regret.

View up to the ridge

If visitors come to the New Forest knowing anything about it, they probably know about the horses. While technically owned by the Commoners, they roam freely across most of the Forest, and Horseshoe Bottom is a spot they seem particularly fond of. You’ll likely find dozens here, as we did, grazing and running around. They are as wary of the humans as we are of them, which works well until the humans get in a car—remember to drive slowly!

A horse grazing on furze bushes

We were on station for nearly two hours, starting on the 20m band this time (we had put the antenna up set for 20 so decided to leave it that way). I’m not sure if it was band conditions to blame, or that the rest of Europe didn’t have today off work, but the 20m band was pretty much a wash. After nearly half an hour, we had only three contacts—Scotland, Poland and a park-to-park to Norway.

Around 1500 local time we reconfigured the antenna for the 40m band, and… well.

I’d regularly wondered how the POTA YouTubers get huge pile-ups on demand, while we usually struggle to get 10 contacts in an afternoon. Today, the tables turned.

The next 19 contacts came and went in a blur, pile-up after pile-up for half an hour, stopped only by our antenna collapsing! (I said I’d regret that hilltop in the wind…) Many apologies to Peter, G7ULL with whom we were half way through a QSO—I have logged the original S9 report you gave me rather than the S2 you gave after the antenna fell! Somehow we were able to get enough of a message out with the wire on the floor.

Our POTA station set up on the ridge

I’ve posted quite a bit about my anxiety over passers-by coming to talk to me while on a POTA activation. It’s always something that I worry about, even if it’s the benign “what are you up to?” rather than the scary “are you allowed to be doing that?” Well, today we had our first two (human) visitors to the station, thankfully both interested rather than offended by our presence! One arrived mid-pile-up, so I had to awkwardly ask folks on the radio to pause for a bit; in the other case the passer-by came with an energetic dog that was very interested in getting “on the air” as well! Still, both went well and hopefully that will reduce my anxiety about future encounters.

We also had a couple of the locals interested in getting on the air too…

Horses on the air!

They were closer than they look—thankfully they didn’t get any closer than that!

A second mini pile-up kicked in as soon as our antenna was back in the air, with eight more contacts in the log over the next 15 minutes. But by 1600 local time, the band was getting full—we had to QSY due to nearby signals and struggled to find a clear spot to start calling CQ again. The wind was picking up too, so we decided to call it quits at that point. A brief burst of phone signal allowed us to see a POTA spot from Charles M0WMB, so I called in for one final park-to-park QSO before we packed up and headed home.

All in all, not a bad way to spend a Bank Holiday afternoon. Definitely better than DIY.

Thanks to H for logging as usual, and to all our contacts today:

UTC	Freq	Call	Sent	Rcvd	Name	QTH
1334	14.292	GM5JFC	35	55	Jack	S of Perth
1346	14.323	LA9DSA/P	47	59	Knut	NO-0239
1352	14.333	SQ5RP	35	59	Pawel
1404	7.146	PA5JKV	58	59+
1406	7.146	G0DGF	59	59	Malcolm	Surrey
1408	7.146	2E0GGI	59	59	Robert	Cheshire
1411	7.146	G0HEU/P	57	59	Paul	NE UK
1413	7.146	F4VPL	36	57	David	S Brittany
1415	7.146	G4OBB	49	59	Des	Suffolk
1416	7.146	M0PTZ	59	59	Paul	Andover
1420	7.146	EI8HT	45	59+	Gerald	E of Cork
1423	7.146	GW5GDP	58	59	Graham
1424	7.146	M3TJT	47	59+	Toby	GB-0095, GB-0251
1427	7.146	M0TVZ	59	59	Ronald	Stratford on Avon
1429	7.146	ON4ON	47	59	Danny
1430	7.146	G1PIE	59	59	Mark	Preston
1432	7.146	G0AJH	59	59	John	Hornchurch, Essex
1433	7.146	GM6ZAK	47	59	Andy	NE Fife
1434	7.146	ON3CRD	48	59	Robert
1436	7.146	MW0KGP	47	59	Phillip	N Wales
1437	7.146	EI5DD	59	59	Steve
1439	7.146	G7ULL	59	59	Peter
1446	7.154	M0BUT	37	57	Trev	N of Stonehenge
1448	7.154	PA0KGB	47	57	Martin
1451	7.154	GM4VYQ	37	57	Liam
1451	7.154	M7DVQ	59	59+	Tony	Brighton
1452	7.154	M1AOB	59	59+	Richard
1452	7.154	MX0OMC	59	59+	Holsworthy ARC
1453	7.154	ON5JK	59	59	Eddy
1500	7.153	M6EAM	37	59	John	Christchurch
1508	7.129	M0WMB	59	59	Mark	GB-0264, GB-0669

See you on the air next time!