Beacon Batch is a 1 pointer SW of Bristol that is the highest point in the Mendip Hills and also has no cows, so very attractive to me. The small roadside car park (aptly named Burrington Ham) also serves the nature area of Burrington Ham, which is a popular walking area north of Beacon Batch. There is room for about 15 cars and when I arrived at 1030 on a cloudy weekday, there were only about 3 spaces still available. The entrance to the walk to Beacon Batch is on the other side of the road about 50 yards from the car park, where there is room for about another 3 cars in a roadside pull-off area, which was full. Getting parked on a weekend would be challenging I think.
Its about a 25 minute gentle walk to the top, up well-defined tracks.
The summit area is relatively flat, with a broad activation zone the surface of which is mostly occupied by knee-high tussocky grass which is a golden brown colour with bits of green. Bronze Age burial mounds are greener bumps sticking out of the grass, one of which has been used for the trig point.
I set up some way away from the trig as that was a natural magnet for walkers, of which there were quite a few, including a school class. The first place I chose amongst the tussocks wasn’t great as it was beside a dead young deer - must have been pretty recent as I couldn’t smell anything.
Activation ssb + fm
KX3, Sotabeams 20/40 dipole, 10m 2el yagi, slim-G and Quansheng
At 1130 utc I started on 20m as I knew Alex, GM5ALX/P, from our local SOTA group was on a summit in NE Scotland and he was first itl at 59 - some great short skip.
A spot the brought a lot more 59 short skip QSOs including Mike 2M0WNA (also from our SOTA group),Tim, G5OLD and Phil, G4OBK with a lot of regular EU chasers and 2 more S2S including Fabio IK2LEY/P. With the pile-up going dry I switched to 10m.
K3TCU was first itl followed by EA8ASL, but things were pretty quiet. There were a lot of EU summits spotting on 10m but I could barely hear any. Then Carlos, PY2VM spotted and we had a good S2S, which I think is my first PY S2S. After that I heard OE9HRV/P and OE/HB9BIN/P pretty well, but unfortunately they couldn’t hear me. Tuning around, I caught Frans J69DS making his first CQ call, so I got in ahead of the pile-up for a new country. Although the band was clearly open to the US, there weren’t many chasers and it took about 20 minutes to get 3 more itl, interspersed with a local QSO with GW5GDP. KF9D called in at 1300 and then SV2OXS off the back of the beam.
I then saw a spot for GW4EUK/P in South Wales on 2m FM 40 miles away across the Bristol Channel and he was 59 for a nice S2S just using the Quansheng rubber duck.
10m brought 3 more US chasers in 20 minutes. I then tried a 2m FM spot which brought nothing, so I tried a CQ on 145.5 and raised Tim G5OLD. I was hearing some strange things on the Quansheng though - sounded like distorted music.
After 3 more US chasers on 10m - K8GQ was last itl, I packed up at 1430 with 45 itl for the day.
73 all.
Looking across the Bristol Channel at Wales
Looking SE
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