When I realised I was leaving home with only two hours to go until sunset, should I have taken the hint?

When I realised I’d forgotten the camp chair, and my activation spot would be a bramble-covered tree stump, should I have taken the hint?

When the rain started blowing in as sheets of water across the valley, should I have taken the hint?

No, of course not. We’re not here for a nice day out! We are here to exchange unintelligible sequences of numbers with total strangers, and one day earn a PDF of a certificate!

Here comes the rain again…

The second of the three new parks that were kindly added at my request this week, this is Turbary Common, part of the Turbary and Kinson Commons SSSI (GB-3624, GFF-0315). Turbary is the ancient right for commoners to cut turf on the land, for use as fuel. While I’m sure no-one has done that here for a while, it’s still home to a small herd of grazing cattle during the summer months. The rest of the year it belongs to the crows, the midges, and the dog walkers.

The central part of the Common is a wide open grassy area with a nice bench and plenty of space around it. However, as you can see from the map below, this (point A) is ever so slightly outside the actual SSSI boundary. The only bench inside the park that I know of is at B, although there is almost no space around it for an antenna. I ended up setting up in an area of recently cleared and burned bracken around C.

This seemed like a good idea at the time, although with only a six-inch-high tree stump to sit on as mentioned above, it was not the most comfortable of activations. It also suffered from an S5-6 background noise level on the 20m band, even higher than at my own house, so next time, moving further away from the edge of the park would be a better idea.

The rain came in almost as soon as I had set up, and at one point I started packing down the antenna again, ready to call the whole thing off. But after a while the clouds had moved on and it seemed like the rain was falling from a cloudless sky. I took that as a good sign that things were about to change for the better, and persevered. I protected the radio and battery as well as I could in my bag, took up position on my tree stump, and called CQ.

Not exactly IP68, but it’ll do.

No hunting for me this time—my legs were aching, my phone was getting hard to use in the rain, and I was starting to regret my choices. I wanted my 10 QSOs and out.

It was a little slow going compared to most activations. The noise floor stuck around and I was giving callers 2s and 3s for readability despite 6s and 7s for signal level. However, the callers seemed to doggedly stick around, even though I had trouble hearing most of them. Not once but twice I did a couple of “any last calls”, followed by “QRT” and only then got someone calling in. 34 calls was the total, including one from Canada. Not quite there for WWFF but a decent start for the first POTA activation of Turbary Common.

By the time all that was done, it had turned into a nice afternoon after all—but with sunset close at hand, it was time to pack up and head home.

Many thanks to all my contacts this afternoon, and sorry to anyone who didn’t make it above my local noise floor. See you on the air next time!