
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
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!

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

View along dipole end – Mast supported by Trigpoint centre
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 |
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.
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