Preparation:

Continuing my “First activator” challenge, these three parks are all new to POTA and located near a Museum/Art Gallery that my wife likes to visit, so this looked like a good combined trip, given that activating points in each of the parks were around 20-minute drives from each other, around the Pemzberg area. After planning this, however, I caught a cold, and in the week it took me to recover, all three parks were activated by others and hence no longer counted towards my personal challenge, where I am currently listed as the first activator of 40 parks. The first of the three to be activated was done by a fellow ham living in Upper Bavaria, but the other two were “grabbed” by a ham travelling from North Rhine-Westphalia. The last one, the day before I activated it, he uploaded his log while I was out activating. So, even though it was shown as not yet activated before we left in the morning, when I entered my logs that evening, I could see it had gone.

In any case, all three of these parks count to my separate parks activated total. It seems almost all of the recently added from WWFF parks have now been activated, so progress towrds 50 “first activator” status is no going to be easy!

Given the expected pouring rain (in fact I managed to activate withing a window between morning and afternoon storms as it turned out), these would again be PLOTA activations from the car, using the usual G90 and HF-PRO2 antenna, so all equipment was packed into and made ready in the car on the Friday evening, ready for a relatively early start on the Saturday morning.

The Activations

POTA DE-1104

The day started with a thin rain haze, but cleared as we drove down to Penzberg. At this point, I was still expecting to grab one of the parks as “First Activator”, which was the first park that I headed to after dropping my wife off. It was also the furthest away from Penzberg, so a good one to get out of the way, while the weather was still OK.

As I mentioned, this was a Saturday and so a contest-QRM day. I had hoped it might only be a small contest, but it turned out it was the CQ Worldwide DX SSB contest – the LARGEST SSB contest in the year’s program, and it runs for a full 48 hours, so there was no escape from it!

Having set up for 20 metres, I tuned around to try to find a free frequency and, having found one with only an S7 QRM noise level, went to spot myself on the POTA site … No Internet! I switched cell phone networks – still nothing! Unluckily, I had picked a spot with NO cell phone coverage.

OK, I could pack up and head to the next park, but instead, I decided to make the contest work for me, for once and simply made over 10 contest contacts to the many stations that were constantly calling CQ. A contact is a contact. Unfortunately, this means that those POTA hunters who would have liked to get a new park didn’t, but with such a tight schedule and no way to spot my intentions to move to 17m, the best solution was simply to bag the contacts, pack up and head on to the next park!

POTA DE-1102

After a 20-minute drive, I arrived at the next park. The non-numeric sequence was so that the route as a whole was minimised. At the new location, in a car park used mainly by fishermen, I was set up and checked I had cell network, and hence Internet coverage and looking at the current POTA spots, I quickly saw that many activators had gone to the 17 metre band due to it being a WARC band and therefore not allowed to be used for contests. So I adjusted the antenna and radio to 17m and started my log with three park-to-park contacts. After that, I sought out a “free” spot (also not easy, as all the “refugees” from 20 metres had moved to 17 metres). After spotting myself on POTA and putting out a couple of CQs, a regular flow of calls came in, and I was soon up to 14 contacts, including some regular hunters. Given my time limitations, I kept this activation short with 14 contacts in 24 minutes. After removing the antenna from the roof, it was time tio head to the last park for the day (which was far closer to Penzberg, to allow an easy pickup of my wife before heading home.

POTA DE-1104

This last park was to be an activation on 17metres and 40 metres, as free space was getting very scarce on 17, and I was hoping that 40 metres might give some of my usual hunters a chance for a contact with a new park for them. The activation started well enough with a P2P into Scotland on 17 metres, but it very soon became clear that getting contacts on 17 metres was going to be hard with only 4 in 10 minutes due to all of the contest QRM. After fighting to get a P2P into Spain, I decided to switch to 40 metres. While not as bad as 20 metres, it was very clear that this band was also full to overflowing with contest stations (three of whom I worked as I needed to quickly bag some contacts). I finished off my day with four “normal” POTA hunter contacts.

Once completed, and just as the rain was starting, I packed up the station and went and collected my wife before we headed home through a major rain storm. I had been very lucky with the timing!s

Photos:

POTA DE-1104

POTA DE-1102

POTA DE-1103

Equipment taken:

• Xiegu G-90 radio.
• Komunica Power HF-PRO2-PLUS-T loaded vertical antenna.
• 3-magnet car roof mount.
• 8 Ah LifePO4 battery.
• 2 x 4Ah Eremit LifePO4 batteries (backup not used).
• Lightweight headphones.
• Smartphone for spotting.

Logs:

POTA DE-1104

POTA DE-1102

POTA DE-1103

Conclusions:

It’s never good to go out to activate on a weekend because of Contest QRM. How this one turned out to be the BIGGEST SSB contest of the year – I had everything stacked against me; however, I was actually happy for the easy contacts at the first park, where I had no internet access. Without there being so many easy contacts, it would have most likely been a fail.

73 ’til the next activation!