{"id":59,"date":"2025-03-24T13:27:42","date_gmt":"2025-03-24T13:27:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/willwoodman.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=59"},"modified":"2025-11-19T21:22:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T21:22:19","slug":"sota-pota","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/willwoodman.co.uk\/wordpress\/2025\/03\/24\/sota-pota\/","title":{"rendered":"SOTA\/POTA"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Today was my first Summits On The Air (<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sota.org.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\">SOTA<\/a>)\/Parks On The Air (<a href=\"https:\/\/parksontheair.com\/index.html\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/parksontheair.com\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">POTA<\/a>) activation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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&#8217;m counting that as a buy one get one free.  SOTA reference <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sotadata.org.uk\/en\/summit\/G\/SE-004\" target=\"_blank\">G\/SE-004<\/a>, POTA reference <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/pota.app\/#\/park\/GB-0130\" target=\"_blank\">GB-0130<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I didn&#8217;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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"768\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/willwoodman.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/IMG_3086-2-768x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-60\" srcset=\"https:\/\/willwoodman.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/IMG_3086-2-768x1024.jpg 768w, https:\/\/willwoodman.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/IMG_3086-2-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/willwoodman.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/IMG_3086-2-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https:\/\/willwoodman.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/IMG_3086-2.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>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&#8217;t want to set anything up that couldn&#8217;t be taken down in less than 5 minutes!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"895\" height=\"143\" src=\"https:\/\/willwoodman.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/image-12.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-63\" srcset=\"https:\/\/willwoodman.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/image-12.png 895w, https:\/\/willwoodman.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/image-12-300x48.png 300w, https:\/\/willwoodman.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/image-12-768x123.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 895px) 100vw, 895px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8217;m counting that as a buy one [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":60,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9,11,12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/willwoodman.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/willwoodman.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/willwoodman.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willwoodman.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willwoodman.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/willwoodman.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66,"href":"https:\/\/willwoodman.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions\/66"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willwoodman.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/willwoodman.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willwoodman.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willwoodman.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}