Another trip home for my logging assistant meant another portable radio trip this morning, this time two POTA parks adjacent to WCA G-00148 Highcliffe Castle.

The two parks are GB-4052 Steamer Point Nature Reserve and GB-1726 Highcliffe to Milford Cliffs SSSI. Now technically, these two do overlap:

However, the overlap is almost all a very steep cliff with no spots for a radio station—or at least, not for a safe one. There’s a small patch of grass right near the western entrance to Steamer Point that looks like it counts, but unfortunately it’s currently fenced off for roadworks around the car park, and at the best is only big enough for a pedestrian mobile activation.

After a quick visit to Highcliffe Castle itself, we resolved to do the two POTA parks as separate activations.

In the middle of Steamer Point, along the cliff top, is an open grass area with a couple of picnic tables. This constitutes just about the only open area in the whole park, so rather than mess about with antennas amongst brambles and shrubs, we set up here.

One thing I didn’t realise until this visit is that as recently as 1980, Steamer Point was part of the Signals Research and Development Establishment. There’s a strange round concrete circle at the entrance to the site, which my logging assistant commented on, but only later did I discover it once supported this radome. There’s radio history lurking all over the place!

Thanks to a number of other POTA activators out there and already spotted, we made it to 7 qualifying QSOs before we even called CQ ourselves, but we eventually did, ending up with 23 “real” QSOs in the log, all on the 20m band. These included what might have been my first contact with the Shetland Islands. Equipment was the Yaesu FT-891 running at 100W, JPC-12 vertical, and Eco-Worthy 20Ah battery.

For the second activation, we headed back to the holiday cottage in the middle of the park, down the cliff to the beach, then back to a spot under the cliff that looked like it would be as out-of-the-way as possible. But this was the first really nice weather day we’d had this year, so the beach was busy. By our reckoning, the second spot was at most 20m horizontally from our first spot, though also about 20m vertically lower.

This bit of beach is an unusual spot for us; it’s strange to look west and see Mudeford rather than the Purbecks, and to the east there was much more of the Isle of Wight in view than we normally get from the beaches closer to home.

16 QSOs was the total here, all on the 20m band again, including Steve VE1SK who some time ago was my first transatlantic park-to-park contact.

Here’s the map of all 39 contacts from this morning, not bad for a quick bit of POTA before lunch!

Thanks to our contacts during today’s pair of activations. Hopefully I’ll see you on the air again later this week!