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This summit was activated on Thursday 7th August 2003 by myself, alone on a solo "lark" activation having set the alarm for 6am and crept out of the holiday house early doors! Without any kind of detailed map, I had to just try and locate the hill, and then find a way up to it. I drove up the M3 from Chandler's Ford towards Winchester, then eastwards across the A272 towards Petersfield, before dropping down the A3 until I could see the hill with the transmitter mast on top. I then set about finding a way up it, and having done so I can now report that the best route would have been to have approached via the village of East Meons, continuing onto the visitor car park that is a little SW of the summit. I walked the few hundred yards from the car park, around the enclosure of the radio mast and along the well-defined path up the very gentle slope to the summit trig. Here there was plenty of space on the grass to set up the SOTA Beam, and I was shortly QRV. For the first time on this holiday (this was my third activation of an SE summit in two days - see also my reports on St Boniface Down SE-008 and Brighstone Down SE-012), it was necessary to use 2m FM, as well as SSB, in order to complete the activation. In common with my other two SE activations, the first station worked was in France!
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, the first two worked on 2m SSB with 2.5 watts, the rest on 2m FM with 1 watt:
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