Today was my first Summits On The Air (SOTA)/Parks On The Air (POTA) activation.

I was lucky enough to have the loan of a Codan Sentry 6110 HF radio so I thought I would give SOTA a try on Butser Hill. This is also a POTA location so I’m counting that as a buy one get one free. SOTA reference G/SE-004, POTA reference GB-0130.

I didn’t try anything fancy just a 6km hike with the radio and a quick setup with the whip antenna from a handy park bench at the top.

I activated on 14.225Mhz in the 20m band on Sunday morning and was active for around two hours. Initially things were good with a couple of quick QSOs into Poland however after this initial success it was a battle to get the required minimum four QSOs for a successful activation. I suspect with the small whip antenna and only 35w of power I was probably a weak signal on the band at a time on Sunday when a lot of amateurs out there are just looking for the easy QSOs. Lessons learnt are to take a better antenna next time! This time I was operating a very portable setup as I forgot to get official permission ahead of my visit to activate in the park so didn’t want to set anything up that couldn’t be taken down in less than 5 minutes!