Beacon Batch club SOTA activation
Club chairman Matt 2E0FNT, Trainee Gary (working supervised by Matt so also 2E0FNT) and I activated Beacon Batch, whih is our local nearest summit. Plan was to activate on FM, this was going to be an easy win as our club net is on Wednesdays. I had the idea of activating on 20m sp I used a KX3 with a flowerpot antenna. My FPA uses two Vango tent pole repair poles to hold the coax antenna, with a connector join in the middle so it folds down to the length of a tent pole element. The KX3 is only good for a weedy 3W but it got out to Scott GW7SAB in Newport
Matt did all the hard work ;) I (G7LEE) can’t take pictures, check the location out for HF suitability and debug my radio gear and activate at the same time. I’ve had the pleasure of activating Wills Neck a while ago so it was Matt’s turn. Wills Neck is SOTA ref G/SC-002, probably POTA GB-0321
I was coming back from Exmoor and Matt was available on this Tuesday. You wouldn’t necessarily choose a Tuesday lunchime for 2m contacts, Matt managed 10 contacts. It’d have been great to have resoved the S2S to mid-Wales but it just wasn’t quite there, that’s the challenge and the joy of radio ;)
Matt used his Anytone AT878DUV handheld with a tactical antenna, which appears to be a foldable piece of steel tape measure, operating from the trig point using a handheld speaker mic.
contacts
| time | call | name | freq |
| 1245 | G8VZA | John | 145.475 |
| 1245 | G7KTE | Peter | 145.475 |
| 1250 | GW4SRR | Simon | 145.475 |
| 1255 | MW7VVX | Shaun | 145.475 |
| 1244 | G4UVZ | Adrian | 145.450 |
| 1312 | M0WYB | Russ | 145.475 |
| 1316 | 2W0OGY | Chris | 145.475 |
| 1330 | M6MQB | Matt | 145.475 |
| 1340 | M7MFS | Matt | 145.475 |
| 1343 | GW8LGX | Steve | 145.475 |
| 1356 | 2W0LIQ | John | 145.475 |
Takeoff from Wills Neck is pretty good all round. G7KTE was in Brixham on the south Devon coast.
This is Matt received by M6MQB in Glastonbury
observations
I made a contact with M6MQB on 433.475 at about 13:35, there was no cross-band QRM with 2E0FNT. However, when I tried calling a C4FM call on the DV calling channel of 144.6125 I could hear I was causing background QRM1 on Matt’s rig, so I knocked it off.
I learned from M6MQB that the power my 30 year old Kenwood TH-D7e started to fade on 70cm after a few seconds, on a previous activation I discovered this rig was off frequency on 70cm (corrected after that experience) so perhaps it’s time to accept that rig is a sick puppy and retire it. It did show that there’s a notable audio delay on the FT3DE on reception, I heard Matt in realtime on the Kenwood but it sounded like there was a slap-echo on the FT3DE.
I wanted to see what the potential of this site was for HF. Although the summit is largely low scrub, there are a few trees which could support a fibreglass pole.
We started out from the Lydeard Hill car park near West Bagborough at ST180338. The car park at Triscombe Stone ST163359 is closer, but starts lower down and would have used more fuel coming from Taunton. There’s a report from 2023 that the road to Triscombe Stone may not be passable any more.
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Digital voice QRM sounds like a horrible buzz on analogue, which is why the UK DV calling frequency of 144.6125MHz is far away from the analogue calling frequency of 145.500. ↩