Family stuff saw me in Newbury this morning with three hours to kill and nothing planned. Obviously it was time for more outdoor radio nonsense. While Newbury and the surrounding area have a number of nice-looking parks, I settled on the only one with a cafe, its own amateur radio station, a restored airfield control tower, and a nuclear missile silo. This is GB-1219 Greenham and Crookham Commons Park for POTA, and also Bunker B/G-1517 RAF Greenham Common.

A pond on Greenham Common

RAF Greenham Common has a long history encompassing World War 2 through to the later stages of the Cold War. The RAF and US Air Force units based here were instrumental in many of WWII’s bombing campaigns, and prior to D-Day in 1944 it was the site of Eisenhower’s famous “The eyes of the world are upon you” speech. From the early 1980s, nuclear missiles were stationed here, and it became the site of mass protests, particularly by the Peace Women.

Thankfully, the air base and the missiles are long gone, and the place is now a huge nature reserve with trails all around the former runway. Signs of its former purpose are inescapable, but nature is slowly reclaiming what is now Greenham and Crookham Commons SSSI. In fact, my visit was particularly timely, as it is 25 years to the week since Greenham Common was re-opened to the public as a nature reserve on 8th April 2000.

The former RAF Greenham missile silo

It’s been a while since I’ve done a Bunker activation, or worked on the 40 metre band, but with the long-closed missile silos still very much part of the landscape, and with lots of space available, I decided to do both today.

I set up on a patch of land just inside the “roam zone”, where the public are free to explore without disturbing the wildlife, but away from the busier trails. I brought back my SOTABeams Band Hopper dipole for this activation, and as usual the FT-891. The band started out in pretty poor shape when I first set up around 1000 local time, but things soon picked up and for a good 45 minutes, the contacts were rolling in.

Around 1050, the QSOs started to tail off, so I quit calling CQ and went to hunt some other spots on the band. I came across Bob G6CKK on another Bunker activation so scored my first bunker-to-bunker there, shortly followed by two more on the same frequency, thanks to Bob passing us around—it was an impromptu bunker-to-bunker net!

My activation location on Greenham Common

One of those contacts was with GB0CC, located at HQ Coastal Command, RAF Eastbury Park. Unfortunately I only found out about RAF Airfields on the Air at this point, so I wasn’t able to join in that activity this year, but it was good to get an airfield-to-airfield QSO in the log for the first time!

The other unfortunate event around that time is that I lost the guy rope from my antenna. The masthead bracket was first damaged back at JOTA in October, and since then repaired with superglue, gaffer tape and prayers. Today was sadly its time to remind my of how dubious that repair job was, part-way through that bunker-to-bunker net. (Hey, they don’t call it amateur radio for nothing.)

I was intent on staying at least long enough to get the other stations in the log, so I completed the last two QSOs by holding the coax tight, using it as the third source of tension to keep the mast upright.

After a couple of minutes of that, I thought better of continuing, and packed down. After all, on the way into the park I had spotted all the antennas on the former control tower, and I wanted to see what was up. Oh, and also by that point the cafe was open.

Greenham Control Tower

I enjoyed a cup of tea in the sunshine, looking at a very confusing artefact fenced off behind the control tower. It looked for all the world like an old minesweeping float that someone had maybe modified the rear fins of to make it look a bit more like a bomb?

I wandered over and checked out the sign, and yes, it turns out that’s exactly what someone had done. It was a minesweeping float from a WW2-era Algerine class minesweeper, modified for reasons unknown. RAF Greenham Common has no known connections to the minesweeping fleet—but since I do, it was an interesting and bizarre thing to find here!

Algerine minesweeping float

After that I headed upstairs, via a brief tour of the museum, up to the top floor. As well as taking in the view, I got chatting with Robert, a volunteer at the tower. On a desk in the middle of the control room were a number of screens showing nearby aircraft positions, including a custom display replicating the layour of old Air Traffic Control paper strips, plus another screen set up to display photos of the closest military aircraft. It turns out Robert had written the code for these displays himself, so we had a nice chat about ADS-B and aircraft tracking!

The antennas on the roof (and the amateur station inside the tower) are GB4GCT, a permanent special event station operated by Newbury and District Amateur Radio Society. Unfortunately the station wasn’t open when I was there, so I’ll have to save that one for a future visit.

Many thanks to my contacts this morning. See you on the air next time!