2m SOTA Activation of Black Down (G/SE-003) 2

Bench with a view – would make a nice activation spot!

The SOTA summit of Black Down (G/SE-003) was my second of three summits on Sunday the 2nd of August. I headed here straight from my activation of Botley Hill (G/SE-005).

This summit is another pretty flat summit, I can imagine the activation zone is quite wide. I chose to operate from the well hidden trigpoint (TP1443) so that I could claim this for the Worked All Britain Trigpoint award. It took me about 20 minutes to walk here from the car park.

Summit Factfile

G/SE-003 – Black Down – 280m

Latitude: 51 3 31 N, Longitude: 0 41 21 W

Grid Reference: SU 919296, QTH Locator: IO91PB

Parking: Carpark at SU920308 – N51:04:11, W0:41:15 (there is one carpark along the road and one slightly set back in the wood – I used the later)

Trig: TP1443 – Blackdown

WAB: SU92

Activation Spot

The trigpoint itself is well hidden and without my trusty Garmin GPS unit I don’t think I would have found it. It’s located some distance away from any of the main paths and even the paths leading to it were very faint and I often found myself scrambling through scrub and bracken. That being said unless you want to activate this summit for the WAB TP award then you don’t need to find it and the SOTA activation zone is quite large.

Found the Trigpoint at last!

The Equipment

I carried both VHF and HF equipment on this summit.

I initially started on 2m VHF, using my Yaesu FT-270 handheld with the SOTABeams 2m dipole.

2m SOTABeams MFD setup on Trigpoint

The QSOs

I kicked off this activation on 2m FM and started by calling CQ on 145.475MHz as some of my earlier contacts on Butser Hill said they would monitor to see if they could hear me. After a few calls this yielded nothing. The Trigpoint location and the summit in general is not great for VHF, but especially near the trigpoint I was located right next to thick trees and heavy foliage.

I moved onto the calling channel at 145.500MHz and managed to get through to Adrian G4LRP in Horsham. We completed our QSO down on 145.475MHz and after calling QRZ M0HYT called in from Southampton. Shortly after I also netted Kevin 2E1KJB down on the Isle of Wight. Three contacts down one to go!

After making a couple of calls on the calling frequency Alvin G6DTW in Ashtead called in, the magic 4th contact needed to activate the summit!

Happy I’d successfully activated the summit on 2m I turned my attention to setting up the HF rig:

Elecraft KX3 Ready to Go on HF - Dipole had other ideas!

Elecraft KX3 Ready to go on HF – or so I thought!

View along dipole end – Mast supported by Trigpoint centre

This is when things went a bit wrong! After setting up the Elecraft KX3 and the linked dipole I noticed a really really high SWR of 99.9-1 on 40m and 28.9.-1 on 20m. Seeing as the linked dipole is not new and is cut for these bands I assumed the dipole had a broken connection. After lowering the dipole I couldn’t see anything obvious, so I put it back up and retested… same issue again!

I switched the ATU back on and attempted to tune up on 20m, after sometime trying to find a match the ATU got there in the end surprisingly. I spotted myself on 20m and within 7 minutes I had another 4 contacts on HF, but something wasn’t right and as expected the signal reports I got back from the chasers were well down.

Coincidentally I fixed the issue the other day, it turned out the 2m Module coax cable inside had shifted position and was covering a toroid, leading to this issue.

At this point I decided to cut my losses and head to my last and final summit for the day over on Butser Hill (G/SE-004), just a 38 minute drive away via the A3.

Time	Call	Band	Mode	Notes
11:11z	G4LRP/P	144MHz	FM	Horsham – West Sussex
11:17z	M0HYT	144MHz	FM	Southampton
11:21z	2E1KJB	144MHz	FM	Isle of Wight
11:30z	G6DTW	144MHz	FM	Ashtead, Surrey
12:05z	SQ9PND	14MHz	SSB
12:07z	EA2DT	14MHz	SSB
12:07z	OK1SDE	14MHz	SSB
12:12z	EA2CKX	14MHz	SSB

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2 thoughts on “2m SOTA Activation of Black Down (G/SE-003)”

Reply 2E0FVI Oct 24,2017 07:51

Id be interested to know if you used anything in particular to support your antenna at trig points? have you made something that fits into the mounting plate? Seems obvious now when I think about it. I’ve used bungees around them previously but need several and angle isn’t great for VHF due to tapered form of the things.
- Reply James Stevens Oct 27,2017 09:09
  
  Hi Owen,
  
  If I use the trig as a support then I’ll either stick it in the centre if it’s missing the plug or strap it to the trig. I use large velcro straps to get a tight fitting to the trig. To be honest more often than not I set the antenna up a little away from the trig, either free standing (with guying ropes) or hold it in place with my knees during rapid SOTA activations.
  
  73, James M0JCQ

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