Preparation:

This activation was planned to coincide with my wife’s visit to the Buchheim Museum in Bernreid on Lake Starnberg. So, in addition to fitting her schedule, I also needed to have our dog along. Hence, this would be a simple activation from the car, interspersed with dog walks. The equipment therefore would be the ever-reliable Xiegu G90 and the Komunica HF-PRO2 antenna on a magnetic mount on the car roof. I planned to operate just on 10 metres which had been open of late, however, the propagation gods were not with me …

The Activation

POTA DE-0458

The weather was not particularly nice—cold and a little foggy. However, the location I found within the park, a carpark right on FohenSee on the outskirts of Iffledorf, was a nice spot despite the weather. In the tourist season, I suspect this will be a bustling spot with a caravan park, restaurant, and a narrow access road, but in November, I had the whole area to myself.

After dropping my wife off at the Museum, it was a 20-minute drive down to my activation spot.

On arrival, I paid my €2 for 2 hours, although I probably could have not bothered with no one to be seen for miles, but I felt the contribution was justified even if it only gets collected from the machine next spring. The first priority was the dog’s walk from which several of the pictures were taken. Had I wanted to set up away from the car, there is a nice lawned area with picnic tables and benches but in this case, I was limited for time and with temperatures around 0°C, I preferred to operate from the car! 

After the walk, I set up the radio and antenna and started searching 10 metres for contacts – I was somewhat disappointed and after spotting myself, getting only 2 contacts on 10m and seeing that most activators were on 20m, I decided to switch band and initially went hunting the Park-to-Park contacts. I “bagged” five in a row and after the fifth a chaser F5PYI called me to QSY 5 down to have a QSO, which I did and then stayed on this new frequency, spotting and calling CQ, this brought in 19 chasers contacts but the operation on 10 metres had taken some time and hence I had to pull the plug before heading back to the museum.

All in All, I managed 26 contacts in an hour, which is quite good and shows that the number of POTA chasers on a weekday (this was a Wednesday) is increasing, almost to the level of SOTA chasers.

Photos:

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Equipment taken:

• Xiegu G-90 radio.
• 6-metre mast and linked dipole (not used).
• Komunica Power HF-PRO2-PLUS-T loaded vertical antenna.
• Three magnets, car roof antenna mount.
• 12 Ah LifePO4 battery.
• 4Ah Eremit LifePO4 battery (not used).
• Plastic painter’s sheet (used) and seat pad (not used).
• Lightweight headphones.
• Smartphone for spotting.

Log:

DE-0458 Osterseen Nature Reserve

Conclusions:

• The activation went well. It didn’t start well but later I had to apologise to callers as I had to pack up and leave to collect my wife from the Museum. I had only one DX call but plenty of European activity on 20m. The simple car set-up worked out well.

73 ’til the next activation!