After St Boniface Down G/SE-008, the second main part of Thursday 2nd August 2007 was to visit Brighstone Down G/SE-012.

   

Jimmy navigated us along the south of the island, before turning north towards the village of Brighstone. Beyond this, the road climbed to a parking area about one mile due west of the summit. We enjoyed a gradually rising walk along a stony track, with views opening up of the English Channel to the south. At the highest point of this path, we turned left (north) for the summit true. On my previous activation, I had continued onto Limerstone Down which is in the activation area, but not wooded over like the actual summit. However, we now understood the true top to be cleared, so that became the objective.

Thankfully, the day had dried and brightened up from early. There were not any trees at the actual summit, but the heather, bracken and ferns were standing a good eight feet above ground level in many places, so we thought the 2m beam or HF dipole might need to be deployed. However, having recently received another "And how long's this one going to take?" from The Boss, we first tried to see if we could 'wing it' on 2m FM handheld style. And indeed we could, with the all important 4th contacts coming via the station of GB2HSC, Hundred Years of Scout Camps event at Brockenhurst in the New Forest.

Fantastic, that was the Isle of Wight taken care of, and we crossed back to Hampshire on the 7.30pm ferry, with Marianne deciding that she didn't want to visit the Needles after all. Jimmy had three of his target four summits, and was looking forward to any opportunity to visit Butser Hill G/SE-004.

Thanks to the following stations, worked on 2m FM with 2.5 watts: