Preparation:

DE-1057 is another park taken over from WWFF into POTA, and while it is in my local area, I again wanted to get my name on it as “first activator”. This activation (PLOTA) will also serve as a test to determine if my radio is now functioning properly and does not drop power without warning (presently, this is believed to be a temperature sensor that shuts down the power). The same equipment as used for the last few activations was packed into the car, and the just over 20-minute drive to the planned spot in the river Zollhaus car park started. It just so happens that the Romantische Strasse trail, which I have already activated, goes through the same point, so while it is not an advantage to me, this will give callers a “2fer” (two Park contacts from one QSO).

The Activation

POTA DE-1057 / DE-10968

The drive started with no rain but high winds (rain was forecast for the afternoon, so the plan was to finish the activation and get home for lunch before the weather came through). As for radio weather, the Kp Index had dropped from over 5 to around 3, but you would not know it on 20 metres. As soon as I turned on, I realised that at first the noise level was very low but “subdued” – as I tuned the band, I realised this was the effect of heavy receiver AGC due to (again) strong wideband noise, further down the band. Being a Sunday, there were also multiple contests in progress and calling over the top of an in-use frequency became the norm, meaning I had to constantly move to find a new free frequency. This was particularly annoying as in the parking area where I was, there was no cell coverage, neither from Deutsche Telekom nor Vodafone. I only needed to walk about 20 metres out of the parking area towards the river, though, and I had some coverage again. This meant I had to find a frequency that seemed to be free. Leave the car with the phone, spot my new frequency in pota.app – wait 1 minute to make sure it had spotted and then head back to the car and hope no one had taken the frequency in the meantime.

The normal HF-PRO2 antenna on the 3-magnetic mount on the roof performed well considering the conditions and competition on the band. In the end, though it took me 90 minutes to get the minimum 10 contacts needed in POTA. The good news was that in these 90 minutes, running 20w of compressed SSB, the power did not drop down to the 1w level even once. Rather than having the radio simply lying on the rear seat, I had it propped up at the front, allowing some airflow to take place under the radio. Today was also a much colder day than on the last few activations.

I managed one IOTA, one SOTA and two POTA park-to-park contacts within the 10 stations that I worked. Several gave me good (real) reports, so the station is back to working well. The problems during the activation were caused by the contest operators and the bad atmospheric radio conditions, bringing heavy QRM from Eastern Europe again. Near the end of my activation, I came across CT1EHI running AM on 14330 – I switched to AM and called him, but unfortunately, he didn’t hear me – it would have been nice to complete the activation with an AM contact.

Photos: