I recently spotted a new park that had yet to be activated and figured I could get there and grab the “First Activation” relatively easily. So after a quick look on the local Council website and a quick check of Google Maps to see who hard it would be to activate it. The POTA.app page said it was pedestrian only, so I grabbed my MC-750 and my Lab599 TX-500 expecting I’d find a clearing somewhere in the woods to set up. Parking near by was relatively easy. The woodland is within a housing estate but parking alongside the woodland offers enough space for a dozen extra cars.
Pheasant Wood is a very small. I did a quick loop around the wood to look for somewhere I could fit the vertical (and its radials!), but there’s only a couple of spots you could fit an antenna like this comfortably. Really, I would have been better with a small dipole that I could have lifted into one of the trees. I picked a spot by one of the two picnic benches though and make it work. It’s a fairly dense woodland though so the table was home to lots of beetles, ladybirds, and more.
I activated the park at about 15:30 on a Sunday, but the weather was a mix of drizzle and showers so the park was very quiet – expect a lot of dog walkers generally though. I grabbed 10 FT8 contacts on 40m before swapping over to SSB for just one more. I’m glad to have grabbed the first slot on this park but I’m not sure if I’ll return for future activations. It was a nice park, but I prefer a POTA where I can find a quiet spot with a little less footfall and this park is just too small to offer that.
