Preparation:

I had written out a list of simple summits that still have winter bonus points and grouped them together. As the weather forecast was for some occasional light rain but otherwise OK, I decided after my activation of Laber on Wednesday to activate both DL/BE-093 Buchberg and DL/MF-082 Schwarzer Berg as they are not too far apart and both are summits I have already activated in 2019 and access is fairly straight forward. These activations were in principal “points grab”  activations with the period when winter bonus points drawing ever closer.

As it turned out because of the unexpectedly severe weather that I hit on the first summit, I never got to the second one.

I had checked out and re-charged the equipment from the Laber activation and so added the large surveyor’s tripod, the 10 metre mast and my two dipole antenna to the gear to be taken and loaded it all into the car on Thursday evening as I was planning an 0830 (local time) departure for Friday.

The Activation:

 When I set off from home it was raining, but not too bad and after about 20 minutes driving it stopped…. until I approached the town of Bad Tölz, that the summit “Buchberg” where I was heading for, is close to, then the rain started and by the time I got to where I park my car, it was driving snow! I sat for a while wondering what to do. After having driven for an hour, it would be a real waste if I didn’t try to activate. At that point the snow stopped, the skies looked clearer, so I decided to go for it! By the time I reached the summit, it was snowing again (well a mixture of sleet and snow) and the winds started to blow. Oh Great! but I decided to carry on – a quick activation – four contacts, then pack up and head off to the next summit! I put up the mast and dipole wire antenna at less than two metres high – just so it cleared the tripod support and the ends of the dipole were not on the ground. Not ideal but “it’ll do” for getting four European contacts on 40m I think.

Checked a suitable frequency – the band sounded quiet. No response to my question “is the frequency in use” so I self-spotted and called – no response. Tried again – still no response. Tuned around – the band is REALLY quiet. Then I tried moving the antenna cable and … it nearly blew me over. The band noise and stations suddenly were there! The short PL-259 extension cable that I thought I had a problem with on the last activation but could not find a fault when I tested in the workshop was indeed still faulty! I took it out of circuit, pulled the rig half out of the rucksack so that the antenna cable would reach the socket on the rear of the rig and now I could work stations! I searched around and found a frequency where there was a little less splatter-QRM from the other SSB stations on the band, self spotted and called CQ. At last, over 20 minutes after arriving at the summit I got a reply – Andrew G4AFI (who is becoming a welcome entry in the log of late) was followed by 10 other contacts from around Europe in just 5 minutes.

All of this time though, the storm was getting worse and as I kept having to take off my large gloves to operate or enter log data, my hands were losing feeling and when I was finally able to go QRT, I didn’t bother to pack the antenna properly, rather I bundled it as best as was possible into the top of the rucksack. I lowered and packed the mast inside the folded tripod for transport and headed away from the summit and storm as quickly as possible, taking care not to slip over on the now very muddy track on the way back to the car.

I was happy to get back to the car and after a few minutes de-frosting, I considered the situation. Better weather was forecast but could I believe that. The set-up at the second summit would take longer as I would have to un-raffle the antenna, which is a job better done in a warm cellar at home. So I decided to call it a day and leave Schwarzer Berg for another day. On the drive home, the snow and sleet stopped and the sun came out however the winds did not die down, so it would have been a difficult activation at the second summit even if I could get some protection from the winds using the concrete tower there.

Photos:

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Equipment:

• Xiegu X108G.
• Battery box (2 x 5000maH hard-case 4S LIPOs).
• Surveyors tripod.
• DX-Wire 10m mast.
• SOTABeams linked dipole antenna.
• Thick green plastic painters sheet (not used).
• Smartphone with PocketRxTx App and USB cable acting as an external display to the rig.

Log:

Conclusions:

I was unlucky with the weather but I persevered and got the activation in the log. I would have liked to have gone on to the next summit but I was in no conditions to do so.

• Positives
• Despite the sudden weather change, I managed the activation and the equipment survived.
• Operating the radio while still within the new rucksack, controlling via the Android App works well (at least when the android phone is not covered with ice and water!).
• Ten contacts in five minutes once I had the equipment working was quite a good run-rate.
• Negatives
• The faulty coax lead wasted a lot of time – I should have ditched it after the problems on the last activation.
• Again I did not get time to test the speech processor, which I had with me, but in that weather, it was certainly quite low down my priority list!

73 ’til the next summit!