It was beautiful out this morning and being a Saturday, what else was I going to do but head out for a few hours to do another POTA activation. This time it was to another local wood, about half an hour from home. Ballanyannan is a beautiful and old deciduous forest that dates back to the 17th century. It’s accessible only on foot, so this was a “/P” activation. That meant QRP with 5W and the recently made 40M-10M End Fed Half Wave antenna.
Not having been to Ballyannan for radio purposes before now, I took the time to have a good walk around, to find suitable spots for operating. I found two really nice locations. Both are on the shores of Cork Harbour and so have saltwater take off.
Setting up was very straight forward, especially given how easy it is to deploy the EFHW antenna. Having remembered to bring insect repellent this time, it was a more pleasant operating experience than last time!
It being a lovely morning, plenty of folk were out walking themselves, kids and dogs, and I had a few interesting conversations with a number of passers-by.
Operating was a bit odd in so far as any stations I worked were really strong but there didn’t seem to be significant numbers of POTA hunters around. Still, honour was more than served with 26 contacts serving up two bands, two continents, two modes, four P2P contacts and 11 DXCC entities. Not bad for an hour’s operating.
