Weymouth Central by M0MJA

M0MJA/p 27th December 2023 ECA/WCA: G-01117 Nothe Fort & G-00844 Sandsfoot Castle ELA: ENG 162 Weymouth Pier Lighthouse UK BOTA: Beaches On The Air Weymouth Central Beach POTA G-0711 Crazy day activating COTA, BOTA & POTA. The Castle and Lighthouse activation zones once again fell within UK BOTA Beaches On The Air references, so the plan was to activate from the beaches beside the ECA/WCA/ELA references. Sounds great doesn't it activating from the beach, under ordinary conditions it would have been. However we did it in the middle of Storm Gerrit! Very heavy winds and rain made this a difficult activation with swirling sand covering us and all the equipment, I had sand in my eyes, my mouth ....well everywhere lol and my radio, cables and antenna were covered. Despite all of these issues activating the Castles and Lighthouse references from the UK BOTA references was really good fun and a real challenge, band conditions were not great either but despite this all references were qualified with relative ease other than the weather conditions. It was a real battle today against the elements but we won, with 129 Qso's in 71 minutes and 24 dxcc from 2 different locations in the middle of a very bad storm! Thanks for all the calls and well done to all those in the logs today you did a great job because at times we could hear very little. 73/11 Bob, MØMJA.