Wednesday 18th May 2022

The BBC had been in touch about making a feature about SOTA to be broadcast on the long-running Countryfile TV show.  What a fantastic opportunity!  I worked hard for a number of weeks, liasing with the production team about exactly what they needed, and assembling a team of volunteer activators across Britain, that would film themselves - and communicate over the airwaves with the Countryfile presenters.  It was a big undertaking and an ambitious plan.  The potential for things to go wrong was enormous - but thankfully everything went very smoothly.

The main BBC presenters and crew would be on Flatholm Island in the Bristol Channel, chosen for its historical Marconi connections.  With them would be prolific SOTA activator Ben GW4BML, who would try to establish contact with SOTA activations taking place at that time - including me!  I selected Cross Fell for my own participation in the hope that it was far enough north that 40m communication to the island in the Bristol Channel would be possible.

Obviously everything was on a tightly coordinated schedule, so it was a necessarily early start that morning.  I drove up the M6, grabbed a spot of breakfast, and made my way to the village of Kirkland.  Although I had visited the summit of Cross Fell several times over the years, I had never approached from Kirkland before, so this was a new route for me.  It was enjoyable too, a steady climb in mainly favourable weather.  The ascent started through farmland and become more wild as it climbed up onto the shoulder of Cross Fell.  A right turn onto the Pennine Way then took me the final kilometre to the familiar summit shelter.

I set up the Alexloop and kicked off on 40m SSB.  Reassuringly, I was working G and GW stations, including into South Wales and Devon, so it looked like I had judged the propagation and skip correctly.  I worked plenty of UK and European stations, although no sign of Ben GW4BML and the BBC team yet.  Fraser MM0EFI/P was worked summit-to-summit - he was on Ben Newe GM/ES-053 and also taking part in the BBC Countryfile project.

Finally at around 4.45pm BST, contact was made with Ben GW4BML/P on Flatholm Island, who then supervised BBC Countryfile presenters Matt and Ellie to speak with me over the air (exchange of greetings messages).

The feature was included on the edition of Countryfile that was broadcast on BBC1 at 6pm BST on Sunday 5th June 2022.  The item was almost universally well received - but a local VHF net was heard picking holes in matters of protocol - thus inspiring Richard G3CWI to make a very funny satirical video!