Preparation:

This was a catch-up activation near to the Oberschönenfeld Monastery which my wife and I had planned to visit about 10 days earlier but had to cancel. This was again a 2fer, but two entities (one park, one trail) that I had already activated in different locations previously, indeed, this (very large) park was my first-ever POTA activation a few years ago.

This would again be a PLOTA activation from the car, as I only had limited time, combining it with my wife visiting the galleries at the Monastery. So the same radio gear as used for the last activations was packed into the car, ready to operate. Despite the fact that I had used the 3-magnet base since replacing the PL259 on its cable, I still packed the single magnet mount, just in case. I did not expect any problems; however, that was not the case.

The Activation

POTA DE-0006 / DE-0597

The drive to Oberschönenefeld was a challenging one, especially in the morning mist. Small roads through many small villages mean that you really must want to get to this monastery to take the drive. It is a beautiful area, but access is less than simple.

After dropping my wife off at what later turned out to be the goods entrance at the monastery, I back-tracked and drove to a “Wanderparkplatz” (walkers parking spot) that I had planned for the activation, as it is on the Jakobsweg trail as well as within the park.

The setup went as normal. I had set up for 20 metres, which, late morning, was still quite busy. No out-of-Europe DX that I could here (too late for the Long Path to VK). I came across a strong station, GS0RIV, and so gave him a call to get an immediate response. This turned out to be the Inverness radio club on a DX Pedition to the Island, North Uist (EU-010). Dave, who was running 500w watts to a hexbeam, and I exchanged 5-9 signals before I said 73, and his pile-up returned. So my 20w and a loaded whip on the car roof seemed to be working fine!

Unfortunately, on the next station I called, I could see something was wrong – the radio was indicating less than 5 watts output instead of the usual 20 watts. I had seen this before when the PL259 on the antenna mount had failed. I exchanged the antenna mount with its coax, the problem was still there. So what seemed like a good start to the activation had suddenly turned bad.

I conducted the following tests/substitutions:

• Replaced mag mount with spare – no change
• Checked Mic gain/power/ATU settings – all fine
• Replaced battery and power cable – no change
• Performed a factory reset on the radio – no improvement
• Changed the cable on the microphone for my spare – no change

The final action was to reverse the microphone cable end-to-end, and then, thankfully, the radio worked correctly again. This would suggest there is an inconsistent contact in the microphone socket within the radio or within the microphone’s RJ45 sockets. I was just happy and had to get busy hunting contacts as I had lost 40 minutes of my planned 90-minute activation and soon would have to leave to pick up my wife (who had left her phone at home).

Luckily, I was able to go through the spotted POTA activators and make Park-to-park contacts with them – five in all. Once that was done, I was still short four contacts for the minimum ten needed to qualify a park activation, so it was now amtter of finding a clear frequency, spotting myself and calling CQ – Luckily the hunters were waiting for my new frequency spot and I got a total of 12 contacts before the point in time that I had to pack up and gead off to pick up my wife.

So a somewhat stressful activation in rather damp conditions, but at the end it was a nice trip-out.

Photos:

Equipment taken:

• Xiegu G-90 radio.
• Komunica Power HF-PRO2-PLUS-T loaded vertical antenna.
• 3-magnet car roof mount and single magnet mount (both used).
• 8 Ah LifePO4 battery.
• 2 x 4Ah Eremit LifePO4 batteries (one used).
• Lightweight headphones.
• Smartphone for spotting.

Log:

POTA DE-0006 / DE-0597

Conclusions:

Even though the antenna connector problem from a couple of weeks ago was fixed, there can always be another problem that comes along, and this underlines how important it is to have alternatives that can be substituted to help in a methodical fault-finding process.

73 ’til the next activation!