26th February 2026
It’s that time of year again! 145Alive day crept up on me fast this time, I have reminders set and I have the days for this year in my diary, but I’d completely forgotten about this one! For the unfamilar, 145Alive is a very exciting event which happens in the UK (and Ireland too this time round!) where amateur radio operators make a special effort to use the 2 meter band to establish communications. There are generally a few “net control” stations scattered throughout the country, they start by calling out for contacts, and as people call in, they make a list. If it’s clear that everbody who is going to has called in, they start going round the list and people get the chance to make their own transmissions to fellow participants to see if they can be heard, and vice versa.
As 2 meters (145MHz) is in the VHF band, hilltops are a must for decent coverage. The rule with 2 meters is generally given as “just beyond the horizon”, meaning if you can see it, you can probably hear it. Back in October, I activated my station from Simonside Hill. Due to a combination of weather and band conditions, there were some utterly spectacular stations heard that day, but today the weather was a lot less forgiving, and I was restricted to places I could get to on my bike.
The usual haunt in that case, for me at least, is Weetslade Hill (IO95eb), just north of Newcastle and with a pretty decent view over it and on to County Durham in a southerly direction, and to the north, up into Northumberland as far as the Scottish Borders.
I packed a (though stylistically cacophonic) selection of very warm clothes, as well as my slightly ridiculous antenna rig consisting of a metal pole, PVC pipe and a slim jim antenna, and headed out on the bike. It having rained so much recently, and given that I am unfortunately missing one of my mudguards, I was already a tad clarted by the time I got there. Though, on an unexpectedly positive note, the rain held off all afternoon!
Once I got to Weetslade I made short work of setting up the antenna. The clock was already ticking round to 1200 and I still had to check everything was working correctly. The way I do this is to tune to the local airport ATIS frequency, that is to say the frequency on which an automated voice delivers information to pilots about to land or take off about the weather, runway conditions, birds seen near the airfield, etc. It transmits 24/7 and is generally a pretty reliable way to check, especially given that Weetslade is on the approach path to Newcastle airport, and you can see right down the runway.
Everything in order, I tuned to the 145Alive frequencies. There were two nets I was wishing to monitor, the one run from Waskerley, Co. Durham (IO94ta) by Paul GØHEU (the same net I was calling into last time round) and a net run from Northumbria ARC HQ in Ellington (IO95ff) as GX4AAX run by Gary 2EØHGP.
I started with GX4AAX as I wasn’t sure if I’d necessarily get through to Co. Durham on just 5 watts. I managed Northumberland 5/9, and had a nice chat with Gary who was just getting things started over at the club. After my QSO I stuck around to hear who else was calling in and heard some calls I recognise from my own log, and some I’d never worked before. This is something that I love about 145Alive, it really brings people out who might normally hang out on HF or digital modes or perhaps those even who haven’t picked the radio up in a while.
After a bit more listening, I decided to jump ship over to Waskerley, and was surprised quite how decent everything sounded, especially through my Baofeng. I decided to give it a go, and put a call in; if you’d like to see the other side of my QSO, there was a livestream going on, and you can watch my bit here! As you’ll notice, towards the end of the call, I downgraded their signal report a bit, and after the QSO had ended, I pretty much lost them! Talk about good timing - their signal came back a little after a while, but I never heard them quite as strong as I did at first.
I scooted off after not hearing much to see what I could find, and there were quite a few ad-hoc QSOs going on. That was fantastic to hear, it’s not often that even two of the 2m FM Simplex channels are occupied, let alone most of them! I had a listen around, and flicked between a few nets without calling in again. I tried some of the further afield nets and briefly heard somebody with an MM (Scotland) callsign and “Scottish Borders”, but couldn’t make out much else. I assume it was MM9YTN, though I could be wrong!
Like last time, I was in a pretty public place operating, and had an even bigger antenna with me this time, pictured above. I’ve often thought that some of the best QSOs I get on activations like these are members of the public curious about what I’m doing. I always make sure I take my time to explain to them what it is everybody’s doing, and that there’s a special event on and there’ll be quite a few of us out freezing ourselves to death for the sake of radio this afternoon. Sometimes I let them have a listen in if they want to, some of it is just talking to people enough to make them realise I’m not a total weirdo! But if it broardens even one person’s horizons even a little bit, then that for me is the most important communication I can have on a day like this.
Just as I was starting to get cold, I decided to call CQ a few times myself on the calling channel, and didn’t hear much back. I have a maxim - as soon as you say “Final CQ before I go off-air”, contacts are almost guaranteed! And indeed that was the case, I got 5 contacts in a pile-up, with some pretty impressive distances, including down to Seaham between Middlesborough and Sunderland, as well as down into Durham.
After a good 15 minutes of QSOs, I decided it was time to head home. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried cycling without being able to feel your feet, but it’s very much a strange feeling! It was only when I got back that I realised quite how muddy everything had got. I’ll very much need to have a cleaning session soon, and make sure everything is back in tip-top shape for the next event.
I really enjoyed today, it was far from the warmest or the most impressive DX-wise 145Alive I’ve done, but hearing so much activity always makes these days worth it. If you’d like to join in 145Alive next time, then grab a 2m radio on the 18th April 1200-1500 UK Time and have a listen around! You might just surpise yourself with quite how much you hear!
Tagged as: walks outdoors radio technology