Phil M0IMA and Kieran M7KJS decided to attempt a Parks on the Air activation in Swanley Park on Saturday with some of our foundation students.

The original plan was to activate on 2m SSB and 40m SSB to give the student some time operating under the club callsign on both VHF and HF.

Unfortunately the weather was a little bit against us and just as we arrived it started to rain hard. Not to be put off buy a little thing like a lot of rain we still setup the 2m vertical antenna on a tripod.

The band was empty, probably due to the rain reducing our effective range. However Mike G8AXA was at home operating his station and kindly moved over to 2m to allow the students the chance have a couple of practice QSO's on SSB.

While everyone got a little soggy, it allowed a discussion on the differences between FM and SSB, tuning and bandwidth of different modes and gave the student some valuable on-air practice. And even the air couldn't dampen everyone's enthusiasm!