I finally got my act together and sorted out the gear for Steve M3SXA to run an APRS I-gate from his QTH in North West London so I popped over there at the weekend and helped him get everything set up. For once things went smoothly and Steve is now gating items from all over west London and even to the southern stretch of the M25, which is a real step forwards in coverage. The plots from aprs.fi below look great, the darker red the square the more packet have been received from it:
Steve’s station runs a tri-band collinear on the chimney which has about 3db more gain than the antenna at MB7UBP, so I am wondering whether I should change things around here to get better coverage..... or maybe I have loaned out one of my best radios!