Access to the 278m high summit of Bardon Hill is extremely straightfoward. The Summit is close to the M1 Motorway (Junction 22) and ideally suited to a quickie en-route activation when travelling North or South and on the way to somewhere else.

Leave the M1 at junction 22, go via the A511 and B591 to Copt Oak. Turn left at the traffic lights here and head north west, you will see Bardon Hill on your left. Park in the lay-by adjacent to private houses at GR SK 457124. From here there is a ginnel through a small private estate. Keep going straight for about 250m until you cross a footbridge. You are then into open country. When you reach woodland turn left along a path. After a further 200m turn right and head upwards through woods onto open land. Bardon Hill Quarry is on your right. A mobile phone mast is on top of the hill. Our activation point was slightly below this but well within SOTA rules. We sat on the fine wooden bench that has been built on the hilltop. This was a convenient place to lash the SOTA Pole to, and the ends of the inverted vee were tied off to the fence running up the hill.

I wanted to evaluate a new antenna, the SOTA Pole supporting a 66 feet inverted vee fed via 300 ohm ribbon, into a 4:1 balun, LDG-Z100 ATU, and the FT-817. However, when we arrived at the top of Bardon Hill it was discovered that only one PL259 jump lead had been packed and I needed 2! I had no choice but to operate with a complete mismatch, just using the antenna with open wire line, the balun and the FT-817. The SWR was off the scale but this unsatisfactory configuration resulted in 2 QSOs on 7 MHz CW, and 5 QSOs on 5 MHz SSB, so not all bad, and the FT-817 PA survived the ordeal.

Thank you to John GW4BVE for spotting me on Sotawatch.

It was decided as our destination on Friday, was Oxford, we would to try to seek out another PL259 jumper lead for our second planned SOTA activation of Walbury Hill (SE-001) on the Sunday. Unfortunately no appropriate outlets to obtain this lead were found.

Our short walk back to the car took 20 minutes, where we enjoyed our packed lunch. The weather had been fine for the activation, but turned foul as we continued to our destination of Burford in the Cotswolds.