I took a last drag from my cheap cigarette, and sighed. I shoulda’ known that dame was trouble, from the moment the marker appeared on the POTA map. Trouble Field by name, Trouble Field by nature, as my pa used to say. With hindsight, that was weirdly specific.

The main goal of yesterday afternoon was another test of the Diamond RHM-8B antenna up on Ramsdown Hill (see previous post), but before I headed there, I decided to do a quick stop in another newly-added local park: GB-6369 Troublefield Nature Reserve. I do like to be unbothered by people during my POTA activations, and what better way to achieve that than to go somewhere that’s almost totally undocumented and still partly underwater! Oh yes, it’s back to flooded river valleys in March. Clearly I hadn’t learned my lesson from last year.

1330-1430Z: GB-6369 Troublefield Nature Reserve

Troublefield comes in two parks, both accessed down a gravel track pock-marked with deep potholes. There’s some parking space alongside the track before it reaches a single house at the end; to reach the nature reserve you head down the right-hand edge of the property until the path diverges. Both ways take you to the different halves of the nature reserve, and after a brief investigation of the field straight ahead (finding it water-logged), I took the other fork to the other field (and found it just the same). However, this northern field did have a downed tree which supported my weight, so at least I could keep my feet above the mud while on the radio.

The antenna setup was a different story though, and a few times the mud threatened the top of my walking boots. My honest recommendation to fellow activators: give this one a miss until April.

Wanting to get the job done here and move on, my equipment was the usual QRO kit: FT-891, JPC-12 vertical and 20Ah battery, operated directly from my rucksack. There was definitely no space to spread out equipment on a fallen tree trunk!

This was a slow activation by comparison to other days chucking 100W onto 20m on a Saturday afternoon, and it took 40 minutes to get 10 QSOs in the log. 20m seemed to be unusually long yesterday, which is backed up by the QSO map you can see at the bottom of this post. The US was coming in reasonably well, and I had my first park-to-park with Türkiye, but almost all of western and central Europe was completely skipping over my head.

We got there in the end though and, activation complete, I headed on to Ramsdown Forest.

1445-1620Z: GB-6456 Ramsdown Forest

Just across the road, and much higher above the water table, lies GB-6456 Ramsdown Plantation & Hillside/Forest Reserve. Up the track guarded by a worryingly narrow passage between large rocks is a car park, and beyond that a half-mile walk to the top of the hill, from which you can take in the view right across the Avon valley, up to Ringwood and down to Christchurch.

There’s one bench up here, which I hoped to use as a support when testing the RHM-8B, but despite ten minutes of loitering, drinking tea and appreciating the views, I didn’t get a chance. I relocated to the other side of the hilltop, finding an out-of-the-way area behind the disused building, and set up there against a fence instead.

Along with the new antenna today I had brought the FT-817, so no automatic tuner. I tuned the antenna the old-fashioned way, adjusting the length of it until I reached peak receive audio levels. I heard John M6EAM nearby on 40m, so I adjusted for that and tried to make contact. But despite the rig telling me power was being output, and high SWR was generally not limiting my transmit power, I couldn’t get through at all. This surprised me as we were only 5 miles apart at most, plenty close enough for ground wave propagation.

I tried making my own CQ calls, both on 40m and on 20m having adjusted the antenna, but again no luck. I also tried a pair of ground radials that I’d made up, but attaching them seemed to reduce the received signal by a couple of S points, and made it harder still to tune.

My attempt at supporting the antenna with my bags was also largely unsuccessful, resulting in the antenna being propped up on the fence at a wonky angle and supported at the bottom only on the coax.

After half an hour with no success, I switched back to the QRO kit. Only then did I think to look up the solar weather for the day—and discovered we were in the middle of a G2 geomagnetic storm.

Ah. Not an ideal day for QRP experiments then.

The testing continues; I am determined to get a QSO out of this antenna at some point, so it wasn’t a total waste for F4LUB to send it to me. But it does mean some upcoming activations I’m considering in places with very little space (GB-5384 Afton Marsh and EA8/TF-001 El Teide) are now questionable. QRP and small vertical whips just don’t seem to be a good combination, which I guess I did expect, I was just hoping for a little bit more than complete failure.

With the solar storm in progress, it was slow going even with 100W on my side, but 40 minutes later I had my 10 in the log and it was time to head home.

Thanks to all my contacts this afternoon. Two more parks down, which means for my 2026 goal of activating every park within 20 miles of home, I’ve now completed 112, with 14 remaining. Catch you on the air next time!