"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

It basically looped back on itself and it was quite muddy.

Probably should have stuck with the road all those other folks took."

—Robert Frost, POTA Activator (probably)
 

It’s October, out on the heath. The days start cold now, with a damp chill in the air that the weak sunshine never quite manages to break through.

View of Upton Heath looking down towards the harbour

This is Upton Heath, POTA ref GB-0112, WWFF ref GFF-0315. This area of heathland is managed by Dorset Wildlife Trust, and while much of it is natural heathland just as it always was, the marks of human use are all over. The heath is criss-crossed with electricity pylons, and the noise of the main road can be heard everywhere. Houses are slowly encroaching, always out of the corner of your eye.

But some relics of human occupation are receding. The Southampton and Dorchester Railway ran through here once, from the mid-1800s until it was torn up in the Beeching cuts in the 1960s; much its route now forms the scenic Castleman trailway. The former brick works have gone too, now long since demolished, though the scars on the land left by their excavations remain.

Former clay pits on Upton Heath

As well as a good place to get lost in, I had some extra goals for today’s POTA/WWFF activation: to give my new antenna its first proper shake-down, to give Field Spotter its first run at what it was meant to be used for, and to have a go at logging with Ham2k PoLo rather than my usual paper logs.

I took the NanoVNA to help get the tuning right for the antenna, which is extra hassle and bag space consumption that I could do without. However, as my first time in the field with a new vertical antenna, it proved essential and I managed to get nearly 1:1 SWR in the 20m band. My attempt at tuning it for 40m was not so successful unfortunately, so I stayed on 20 throughout the activation.

As well as needing the VNA, the rest of the new antenna kit brought a new challenge in the form of pack weight. With the bulkier kit and the totally overkill LMR240 coax, my rucksack was fast approaching 10kg, and no longer had any real amount of free space inside for a coat or any other equipment.

My rucksack and contents laid out on the ground

Nothing makes you look quite as extra as boots, thermos, and a 10kg camo-coloured rucksack with an HT strapped to it, while everyone else is walking their dogs and wearing trainers.

PoLo worked well, though it took a few park-to-park contacts before I figured out where to put the other party’s park reference. I do particularly like the integrated spots list, which while it doesn’t quite replicate the visual interface we have in Field Spotter, it does at least check off people you have already spoken to—a nice feature to have when the log gets long enough that you start forgetting.

Field Spotter worked fine as expected, too. It’s nice to have finally used it in the environment it was intended for!

Field Spotter in use in the field

With plenty of new things to test, I kept the activation itself pretty basic. I started off with Field Spotter giving me a few park-to-park QSOs, then I settled into a frequency of my own and called CQ. The pile-up delivered as usual, and after getting around 30 in the log in just over half an hour, I decided to pack down the station and do a bit more exploring down towards the clay pits and the lake.

JPC-12 antenna with loading coil silhouetted against the sky

There are plenty of opportunities to get lost here; paths that look like shortcuts but just loop around, and ones that peter out into gorse and mud. The “proper” path zig-zags wildly and dips up and down, and is not always obvious. Google Maps doesn’t know most of the paths here either, so taking a photo of the map board or using an OpenStreetMap-based app is definitely recommended for navigation.

An hour of wandering passed, but the sun never did burn through the clouds. A pale and slowly fading light signalled the end of the day, and with a kilometer hike and 50m of elevation gain ahead of me, I turned and headed for the car.

Thanks to all my contacts today:

UTC	Frequency	Callsign	RST Sent	RST Rcvd	Name	Park
1335	14.279	DL7CD	57	59	Marcus	DE-0449
1349	14.320	DL9TU	59	59	Uwe
1350	14.320	F5PYI	59	59	Larry
1351	14.320	9A4MZ	44	59	Zeljko
1352	14.320	OH3GZ	53	57	Jack
1353	14.320	DL6APM	57	57	Pawel
1354	14.320	EA3IDY	49	59	Jose
1355	14.320	IU8CNE	59	55	Luca
1357	14.320	EA1BUL	59	57	Jose
1357	14.320	DG3DJ	57	57	Andreas
1358	14.320	IZ2BKA	49	57	Giorgio
1358	14.320	IW0HK	59	59	Borgnino	IT-0530
1359	14.320	HB9HZC	55	58	Pat
1400	14.320	DM5XT	57	58	Falko	DE-0860
1401	14.320	DK5UR	56	57	Heinz
1402	14.320	M7PHG/P	57	57	Seb	GB-0008
1403	14.320	SP2EL	45	59	Arek
1404	14.320	IU4QRU	45	55	Gian	IT-0918
1405	14.320	IN3JIO	59	55	Davide
1405	14.320	SM3NRY	58	55	Thomas
1406	14.320	SP1C	59	56	Jarek
1407	14.320	F4ILH	43	53	Jean
1407	14.320	HB9HGW	55	56	René
1408	14.320	F4LRR	42	59	Fab
1409	14.320	DL7PIP	57	59	Sven
1410	14.320	YO3GND	31	41	Richard
1411	14.320	HB9HDI	59	59	Martin
1411	14.320	DL2DXA	55	56	Bernd
1413	14.320	F4LMS	45	59	Quentin
1414	14.320	OM6IN	57	59	Lubomir
1423	14.320	IQ7AF	54	59	A. R. Italiani Sezione di Lecce
1428	14.335	HB9HCS/P	42	55	Stefan
1432	14.345	EA5W	57	59	Paco	ES-1430
1445	14.310	IZ0FTS/P	54	54	Daniele	IT-1838

…and this guy, thanks for the spot on the 500 nanometre band.

A grey squirrel on Upton Heath

Here’s the map from today:

See you on the air next time!