Preparation:

This activation was to be a “PLOTA” with showers on and off through the day, rather than lose a day, the compromise of operating from the car in a car park, within a POTA park, is a good fall-back option.

As my wife wanted to visit two museums/galleries in the centre of Freiburg during our short break in the area, the choice of the town’s large recreational park was a good option.

The park, as it turned out, was quite an interesting one, with a large lake where all can swim, run model boats or simply sit by the side of it and relax, nice walking tracks through gardens, a Japanese Garden, as well as a sports centre.

The Activation

POTA DE-0422

As it turned out, while overcast with a couple of light showers, the terrestrial weather was not bad, and I had time to take a walk around at least some of the park before starting to operate.

The set-up was the usual, 3-magnet mount on the car roof supporting the Komunica Power HF-PRO2 loaded vertical antenna and the G90 inside the car.

My first relief was that the radio worked. After having to cut short the activation on Schauinsland the previous day due to an extremely high VSWR, I was relieved to find the problem must be in the Inverted-V antenna (it could have been an internal connection in the G90 that had failed).

I started on 40 metres but, finding no contacts there, moved to 20 metres where it seemed several other park activators were operational. In all, in the 1 hour of operation, I made six park-to-park contacts and a total of 21 contacts in all. One of those was from the US! How W1OW heard my little signal, I will probably never know, but for a restricted setup with just the loaded whip antenna, I’m rather happy with that and all the other contacts around Europe.

With drive time and my wife’s schedule, the one-hour operation was all that I could manage, but it certainly was a successful hour of operating.

Photos:

Equipment taken:

• Xiegu G-90 radio.
• Komunica Power HF-PRO2-PLUS-T loaded vertical antenna.
• Three–magnet car roof antenna mount.
• 2 x 4 Ah LifePO4 battery.
• Small headphones.
• Smartphone for spotting.

Log:

POTA DE-0422

Conclusions:

The Simple fallback – activation worked well this time. Conditions were not fantastic but also not bad, and the fact that such a simple configuration with just 20 watts and a loaded vertical whip can allow these contacts to be made is part of the magic of amateur radio.

73 ’til the next activation!