Seeing how the day was nice and sunny, I decided to get out and do a SOTA activation. Looking at the summits page on sotawatch, I decided on Wapley Hill, G/WB-016, in Herefordshire, which looked rather interesting, being the site of an iron Age Hill Fort.

Journey time from home was around an hour, even though I missed the turning off the B4362, and ended up having to turn back, courtesy of a roundabout on the outskirts of Presteigne! Being careful not to miss the turning again, I was soon in the car park, ready to go.

A fairly simple path using forest tracks soon had me close to the fort itself. A permissive path next to a rustic seat gave a nice short cut to the entrance.

Route up Wapley Hill

Rustic seat with permissive path to the right

End of the permissive path, the entrance

I stopped for a few moments to read the informative sign! (Click to read it!)

The informative board at the entrance

Looking around, once inside, I decided to set up on one of the mounds. In hindsight, which is a marvellous thing! this probably wasn’t a good move, as it appears that everyone (and his dog.. literally!) is intent on walking around on top of the mounds!  Still, I hope I didn’t cause too much trouble 🙂

Operating position, possibly not a good one!	Centre of the hill fort, probably better for HF

I primarily worked on 2M FM, although dropped down to 40M to gain a S2S near the end of the activation.. Perhaps the operating position wasn’t ideal, but the middle of the hill fort would have shielded 2M signals a little, maybe next time I’ll use the middle of the fort which has room for quite large HF antennas!

The following were all logged in a fairly laid back hour and a half:

All in all a very pleasant afternoon in the sun, even if one walker did think I was calling in air strikes from nearby Shobdon Airfield!

I had attempted to activate View Edge, G/WB-018, the week before, from the edge of the old quarry, on 2M only,and failed miserably to gain even a single contact!

This time, I packed my new Sainsonic MP-817 HF Amplifier as well, just in case I had similar problems..

View Edge is essentially a ‘drive on’ summit, so to comply with SOTA rules, it’s really necessary to operate from somewhere away from the car. After parking at the side of the road at the entrance to the old quarry, next to a gate which looked as if it hadn’t been opened in quite some time (I did try to leave enough room, just in case someone needed to open the gate of course!) I walked up the road towards the house on the right hand side, crossed the road and climbed over the stile.

Simple ‘route’ to my activation point

I then followed the route of the footpath along the side of a field to the next stile where I bungied the fishing pole to a fence post, and attached the Norcal Doublet and the coaxial colinear.

View Edge activation	View Edge Activation

With the ft817nd, HF Amplifier, and travel tuner balanced precariously on top of a fence post, the following contacts were made in just over an hour:

It seems to be quite a popular walk, as 2 groups passed through during this time, maybe next time I’ll not bungy the pole to the side of the stile……

Once packed up, it was a short walk back along the path, retracing the route back to the car,