Preparation:

The weather had been so variable that I had a one day window to get out and activate. I considered “bagging” two 6 point SOTA summits that I know but decided rather to try to access this HEMA summit and then possibly go on, to one of the SOTA summits. The risk was that I hadn’t done a “Reccie” of this summit and it was possible that access may be impractical. If it was quickly clear that access was going to be a problem, I could always head straight on to one of the SOTA Summits.

I did know that this was a wooded summit and as such, my super light HF-PRO2 loaded vertical antenna set-up would not perform well, so I would use the old SOTABeams linked dipole and my 6-metre pole and screw-in sun umbrella base. All of which are not light but can be packed onto one rucksack. Perhaps next time I can use my new SOTABeams Bandspringer end-fed antenna, which arrived here two days later.

Another attraction of this summit is the fact that it still has the highest wooden radio tower in Germany on its top. It’s used by Vodafone as a cell tower. Despite being wooden, the 62.5m high, Rottenbuch Radio Tower was only built in 2002 but now is suffering from ants and so may soon be replaced with a more conventional tower. I wanted to get to see it before it perhaps disappears.

Another delay to my activations recently has been that one of the main roads that I use to get to the summits (the B17) had been closed for repairs and upgrades over the last few months. One major stage (the large bridge over the Lech river) was finished on Friday and a further part of the repairs to the road junction nearby would only start mid-week, so Monday was THE day, for this reason as well!

The Activation

The trip to the new summit went down a route that I know well and in fact, I had driven past this summit many times as hasn’t enough prominence to be in SOTA but it does have, for HEMA. There are two approach roads to the summit from the B23 main road. The first is from a car park of a small roadside restaurant. Unfortunately, this one proved to be a disappointment straight away with a sign banning all motorised vehicles except for those living on the road or working on the road (eg winter clearance). So I headed on to the next possible access road. This one again is at the end of a roadside parking area, which meant I was able to park and then go and see if this was also a restricted road. Thankfully it was not, so I drove up this (single track) road until I came to where the road changes to a track to head off up the hill – where – there was again a restricted road sign (the black P on the map shows where I stopped), this time restricting motorised vehicle access to only forestry workers. Looking at the map (see below), it was some distance and a steep climb up the track. I wondered whether to take the easy option and head on to the SOTA summit that I know and leave this for another day. While the weather was nice, however, I decided to load up with the rucksack and see how much closer I could get to the summit.

Some 25 minutes and several bites from flies later I reached the summit and found a cleared area across from the radio mast. The absolute summit is about 50m before this point but this area is certainly in the activation zone and thankfully now had fewer biting flies! Ernie VK3DET kindly said he would listen for me but with the DX radio conditions being pretty horrible of late we didn’t hold out much hope. That proved to be the case. With several calls on 20 metres, Ernie could hear nothing. So I spotted myself on the HEMA website and on the DX Cluster and happily, I soon had a few callers. 

Interestingly the strength of signals from around Europe, especially the UK were strong on 20 metres. At the start, there was some QSB but as the band “woke up” even this went away. The contacts were more like nice conversations than quick activator/chaser calls which was refreshing. Once the calls on 20 metres dried up (perhaps the MUF had dropped under 14MHz again) I took down the antenna and reset it for 40 metres. On this band, the background noise was worse (K Index was up to 4 after all) and it was difficult to find a free frequency and once I had one, even more difficult to keep it! Typical 40m SSB in Europe!

After about an hour, I decided it was getting quite hot and I should start packing up and head back down the hill. At this point, I decided not to go on to a SOTA summit but as the climb up the hill had been quite strenuous, I would amble slowly back down and then drive home. As I got to the main road in the car, I realised this had been a wise call as the road was full of everyone and his dog in their campervans and cars towing caravans were on the road heading south towards “my” SOTA summits. Had I also gone that way, I would inevitably hit queues at the lifts and crowded summits. The SOTA summits can wait for another day.  

 Photos:

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Equipment used:

• Mountaintop travelling 40-litre rucksack.
• Xiegu G90.
• Komunica Power HF-Pro2-PLUS-T loaded vertical antenna. (not used)
• Modified mini photo tripod with clip-on radials (not used)
• Lamdahalbe 6m mini-mast.
• Screw-in sun umbrella base.
• SotaBeams linked dipole.
• Aerial 51 404-UL OCF dipole (not used).
• Battery box (2 x 5000maH hard-case 4S LIPOs).
• New 4000maH LiHV battery (not used).
• Painters thick plastic sheet.
• Lightweight headphones.
• Smartphone with PocketRxTx App and USB cable acting as an external display to the rig. (not used)

Log:

 

Conclusions:

• While the weather stayed nice, I am happy that I battled on and reached the summit but also that I did not try to activate a second summit.
• One thing that I should not have left behind in the car was my water bottle but once I realised, going back for it was not an option.
• Although the DX band conditions were not good, I was happy with the performance on 20 metres around Europe. With some UK stations being the strongest that I have heard them from a summit! 40 metres was just noisy and messy.
• A HEMA summit does not attract as many callers as a SOTA one does, but the QSOs that you have are more “chatty” rather than just a “contest exchange”.
• The HEMA to SOTA contact was a nice one, even though it doesn’t count for anything special.
• The G90 radio continues to perform well.

73 ’til the next summit.