Wow, is that ever-so-slightly animated image doing your head in? Because it is mine!
Thanks ChatGPT. I'm glad you can now create custom images from a text prompt. It'll save me even more time, which I can then spend doing radio-related nonsense.
Anyway, I've been out terrorising the ramblers, dog-walkers and beach-goers once again, in the pursuit of some specific POTA awards.
First up were the 'Early Shift' and 'Late Shift' awards, where you have to make 100 contacts before 8:00am UTC and after 6:00pm UTC respectively. The latter was fine by me as I'm a night-bird, but the early start up at Ditchling Beacon was slightly tougher. I was rewarded for my efforts though, by the most beautiful sunrise and the deeply emotional experience of being reborn into a fresh and innocent world of hope(?)
As an aside, I did bump into a chap at Ditchling Common on another activation who was excited to tell me about a lunatic in a Transit van he sees regularly up at the Beacon around 5:00am with a huge drainpipe-style antenna on the roof. I denied all knowledge.
Moving on, I hit 50 unique parks mid-April for my 'Diamond Activator' award, which I've been chasing for a while. Next award at 75 unique parks, which will be hard, because I've done all the local ones now. They'll have to wait 'till I go on holiday somewhere.
On the 19th April, I went out specifically to take part in the Spring 2025 'Support Your Parks' event, where I snagged both my SYPs Activator and Hunter badges. Better than that, I got my 25th Park-To-Park contact (which is what it says it is) courtesy of contacts with DL7UVO and DG1LHM. I've been after that one for weeks too. I do love a Park-To-Park. Brethren.
I accidentally racked up 30 hunter contacts in the P2P process for my Hunter Gold ticket (which I'm not really interested in, personally) before embarking on an absolute mission to achieve my best result yet - the coveted and apparently pretty rare 'James F. LaPorta N1CC Activator' award. This is a special one, where you have to make contacts from ten different parks on 10 different bands each! Challenging, when, as has become abundantly clear to me, not all bands are open every hour of every day, so multiple visits and lots of patience required to tick that lot off. I've learned an awful lot about all the various HF bands this month.
So after all that, you might think I'm obsessed with collecting pointless awards and then bragging about how many awards I've got - but that couldn't be further from the truth. I just like a challenge. When I'm done, I'm done and I won't be carrying on doing the same thing ad-infinitum. I'll just do parks for fun in the nice weather. Many thanks to Phil, who got me into this whole mess, Dick, who helped me out with a couple of 6m entries when I was struggling, and a few regulars from the POTA community across the UK and Europe, with whom I've made many contacts in my ongoing quests. Especially Tony and Paul. You know who you are.
What's next?
A few things. Firstly, there's Mills weekend next weekend (10th and 11th May) where I'll be doing a combined MOTA and POTA on the Saturday from Jill Mill car park using GB0JJM. This is a personal SES event and not an MSARS official event. Sunday I'm at Oldland Mill for the MSARS MOTA, and I'll also be doing a South Downs National Park POTA activation from one of my favourite spots a short walk up from the mill. Pop along if you fancy that.
Next challenge for POTA is the 'Activator Six Pack', where you have to hit ten contacts from 6 different parks on 6m, which could be tricky. Fortunately, you don't have to do it all in one day. Once a decent E's opening occurs, it'll be all over bar the shouting.
The last biggie for me is the 'Rover Rhino' award. That's ten unique parks in one UTC day. A bit like the Three Peaks Challenge, but for old radio nerds. 'Rover Warthog' was too easy at five parks in a day :)
I've done a lot of FT8 in a lot of parks, but soon I'll kick back and do some more voice, in an altogether more relaxed style.
Here are a few pics from a recent Shoreham beach activation.
Antenna: AliExpress special - around £15, including 5.6m stainless steel whip (bargain)
40m loading coil: £17, also from AliExpress (very good price and performance)
Ground rod: found in the garden shed
SO239 to 3/8" x 24 alloy bracket/adapter £15 on eBay
Couple of 5m radials - pennies from the Junk Sale.
Also in the last photo: 20m Ampro Hamstick - around £30 from all good UK radio emporiums. I have one for each band, which does work out quite expensive, but they are very good, and I can recommend them too.
73,
Berni M0XYF
