This summit was activated on Wednesday 6th August 2003 by Jimmy and myself.   This was our last activity on our day out on the Isle of Wight, after earlier fun on Shanklin beach and an activation of St Boniface Down SE-008.   Liam had fallen asleep, so he remained with Marianne in the car (with all the doors and windows open, and the parcel shelf vertically polarised to act as a sun shield!), while Jimmy and I put in a pacy walk up to the summit.

We parked in the marked car park at SZ 421 846, from where the track leads up eastwards from the other side of the road.  We continued up the gently inclining track and beyond the path that veers left up to the summit and trig point.  This from the map appears to be surrounded by the trees and vegetation in Brighstone Forest, so we decided to snub it and head instead for Limerstone Down SZ 437 837.  This has a clear take-off to the south (and other directions as we were to discover), and at 199m ASL is an acceptable 15m lower than the summit true.  At this point there was one of those direction viewpoint things, and plenty of flat grass to erect the SOTA Beam on - but watch out for the plentiful supply of sheep droppings - thankfully dry on this scorcher of a day.

In my four contacts, I worked only one station from England - and that from the Isle of Wight!  I got myself a new DXCC country in Guernsey to add to my earlier first contact with France - and here I worked two further French stations.  After completing the activation, we quickly packed up and descended to the car, and then drove straight up to Fishbourne for the ferry back to Portsmouth.

Callsign today was MX1SWL/P, the club call of the International Short Wave League (ISWL).  See my radio page or click on the link for further details.  Thanks to the following stations, all worked on 2m SSB with 2.5 watts: