GB-3261 – Jubilee Tower Historic Site

Jump to POTA GB-3261 Details of Activation and Map & Logbook

Forest of Bowland

GB-3261, Jubilee Tower Historic Site, sits within the stunningly beautiful and largely undisturbed Forest of Bowland (GB-0219 – Forest of Bowland National Landscape).

The Forest of Bowland is located in Lancashire and has a long and rich history dating back to the medieval times when the area was designated a Royal Hunting Ground. This restricted man’s influence on the forest and has continued through to today, even though forest laws were revoked in 1507.

Visit the area today and you will mainly find gentle rolling fells, miles and miles of dry stone walls, and stone buildings in small villages and hamlets using local gritstone. There has been some industrialisation in the area with quarries, lead mines and lime kilns dotted over the landscape and latterly (19th century) the odd paper and cotton mill.

The park forms part of the Pennines to the east. Sheep and beef farming take place in the uplands, whilst in the valleys dairying is most common. More than 10% of the forest is designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest. For ornithologists, this a very special place indeed with the moors being a major breeding ground for upland birds. In fact, majority of the Bowland Fells are designated as a Special Protection Area under the European Birds Directive. The lowlands valleys are also rich in bird and mammal species, containing important ancient woodland habitat.

There are many small country and market towns dotted around the outside of the forest, as well as the city of Lancaster. However, inside th forest are little villages and hamlets. One notable village is that of Dunsop Bridge, in the Ribble Valley, which lay claim to being the geographic centre of Great Britain. There are many sites that lay claim to this title, but in 2002 the Ordnance Survey verified that Dunsop Bridge is very close (7 KM) to the centre of Great Britain (including islands). This little village is also the gateway to the famed Trough of Bowland, the route that the Pendle Witches took to their trial at Lancaster Castle.

GB-3261 – Jubilee Tower

The site for today’s POTA activation was the Jubilee Tower, in the north west of the forest. It was built to commemorate was Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887. And it could hardly be situated in a more perfect location. The extensive panoramic views sweep from Black Combe and southern Lakeland in Cumberland, down the coast across the Lancashire Plain, past Blackpool Tower to the north Sefton coast at Southport. On a good clear day the Clywdian range of mountains (and beyond towards Snowdon) can be see in the distance. Behind, are the spectacular fells of Grit Stone and Ward’s Stone (G/SP-003 for SOTA).

One activation – two parks?

Now I have a personal POTA rule of never claiming more than one POTA site per activation. Why when I could attain parks quicker by doing this? Well it’s because I have to come back again to the area and active it again. And who wouldn’t want to return to the stunning Forest of Bowland again – as if I’d need an excuse. So I didn’t claim GB-0219 (Forest of Bowland National Landscape) for this activation – I will be back again for another visit for this one.

Details of Activation

Callsign used
G7LFC

Weather conditions
Mainly sunny, about 22 Degrees C, breezy.

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, KitBrix waterproof go-bag with an 8L Really Useful Box inside.

Software used
HAMRS Pro logbook, WSJT-X 3.0.1 64-bit data modes software, BktTimeSync, Microsoft Windows 11.

Bands, modes and power used
20, 15 and 10m using 10w of FT8.

Station setup
The station was setup inside the back of the van, using an Ecoflow power station as the power source and an Ampro single band antenna mounted on top using a three-way mag-mount. I do find the Xiegu gets a bit warm transmitting FT8 at 15w, so I do use the desktop stand with a built in fan. For this sort of activation, the laptop won’t run out of charge, it had used 52% by the end of this one.

How did the activation go?
Having stopped at the centre of the UK (almost) and driven up through extremely scenic Trough of Bowland, we arrived on-site about 14:40 (local). A leisurely setup took about twenty minutes and we were on-air just before 15:00. My wife came with me and crafted whilst staring out at the amazing view before us. The activation was a breeze, averaging just under one contact every three minutes – I did take a few breaks for a quick walk and to take photos so the contact rate did vary. The higher hills behind and to the left (north through East) didn’t seem to hamper things as we breeched them to make contacts into Scandinavia and Northern Europe.

Notable contacts
Best DX was W5XO into locator square EM10, over 6,000km distant. Best contact was W3EWL/QRP – I didn’t get the locator but it was a QRP to QRP contact across the Atlantic.

Pros and cons
Working from inside the van is always pretty easy, protected from the sun and rain (not this time thankfully). So nothing much to say on this activation here.

Observations and lessons learned
I’ve been operating from the van for several activations now so I have it pretty much sorted. The go-bag is always in the van and contains everything I need, so should I happen to come across a park, and I’ve got time, I’m ready to go. One of the nice things about this van is that it has a slide-out field kitchen at the back and we did use it for making a brew. This is luxurious POTAing.

Map & Logbook