POTA GB-0437 – Stoneleigh Park

Jump to POTA GB-0437 Map & Logbook.

Stoneleigh Park, near Coventry in Warwickshire, is also known as the National Agriculture and Exhibition Centre. It holds several large exhibitions each year and was well known for hosting the Town & Country Festival every August bank holiday weekend. Sadly, this event ended in 2006. I was part of team that used to run the amateur radio special event station for several years, so I am familiar with the site.

Members of the public can get on-site without attending events at the show ground by visiting the farm shop and restaurant. However, I was there today to visit The World of Park and Leisure Homes Show. I had hoped to see a range of affordable static caravans, but much of what I saw were more expensive than my extended semi-detached house. One of the static homes even had patio atop the living accommodation – go figure.

After my brief visit to the exhibition I returned to the van and set up the Xiegu X90 transceiver and various mono-band Ampro antennas. The bands didn’t seem very lively at all and just twenty-five contacts were made. The best DX was Cuba, the rest of the contacts being on the continent.

The weather had changed today. For the last ten days, or so, we’ve suffered below par temperatures and lots of rain. This was further exasperated by high winds the last couple of days. Today, the rain had abated and throughout the day the clouds withdrew and the temperature started to rise – towards the end it was getting quite warm.

As a parting comment, I really do recommend the farm shop and restaurant – it’s well worth a visit, as well as being an excellent excuse to get on site.

Map & Logbook

Equipment used: Xiegu G90 with GZF-1 Desktop stand with cooling fan, DigiRig Mobile, Ampro single-band antennas, 14″ Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 Core i7 with 16GB, EcoFlow RIVER 2 power station.
Software used: HAMRS Pro logbook, WSJT-X 3.0.1 64-bit data modes software, BktTimeSync, Microsoft Windows 11.