Preparation:

This was a park that I have not yet activated. It is located near Kaufbeuren, and while there was a glass and jewellery exhibition taking place, this was an opportunity to combine a POTA activation with my wife visiting the exhibition.

As there is no parking within this park, this would be a “proper” Park activation, with a 350m walk from the nearest parking possibility (at the Mooshutte restaurant) and setting up my mast and dipole to operate under, sitting on the ground. Looking at the aerial views on Google maps, there seemed to be a cleared area in the forest, just off the track, so that would be my target (hoping the picture was not too old and the area had been reforested in the meantime!)

A relatively early departure at 8 am local was planned, and as usual, all equipment (about 14 KG of a 400L rucksack with radio, battery, mast, screw-in umbrella base, backup antenna and of course pack-up and water) was loaded into the car.

The Activation

POTA DE-1106

The day started cold, colder than the previous day, with just 2°C (and this in May!). The run down was uneventful, and I arrived at the parking spot, after dropping my wife off, at around 0700 UTC. By 0720, I was at the site and setting everything up. I had hoped that with starting a little earlier than I normally do, there would be the possibility of contacts into VK. Although Ernie, VK3DET, kindly tried, there was no DX propagation on 20 metres. Apparently, the VK stations that had been heard had disappeared 30-45 minutes before I finished setting up.

After working a few Spanish stations (including two in the Azores) and having a P2P with a German activator on holiday in Sweden on 20 metres, I decided to switch to 40 metres, and thankfully, there was more activity on that band. I first went to see if I could get a P2P contact with two other activators who were spotted at pota.app. Here, I found the major difference between POTA and other schemes, such as SOTA and HEMA. In those schemes, the “chasers” will always pause and let a Summit-to-Summit contact take place as a mark of respect to both activators. In POTA, that is not the case; the “hunters” only care about getting their contact with the activator and block the frequency until they do. Even when they clearly hear another activator calling “park-to-park”, they just keep calling on top of him or her. So I left those two possible P2P contacts, found a free frequency, spotted myself and called CQ POTA. It wasn’t long before I got a run of callers. Once that run dried up, I went back to the two other activators and, with perseverance, managed to make those two P2P contacts.

My smartphone gave problems with typing on the on-screen keyboard, which did not bring up on screen what I had typed. I had this issue on the last activation, and I put it down to the fact that the safety glass on the phone had a crack in it. That has been replaced in the meantime. When testing this again after I got home, the phone worked perfectly, so my thought now is that it was the cold. The temperature never reached 10°C during the activation and was most likely around 5°C for most of the time.

While changing from 20 metres to 40 metres, where I had to lower the mast to reach and reconnect the links, the mast collapsed in on itself, breaking one of the supports on the dipole T-piece. This had to work with just one support for the rest of the activation. After getting home, the repair was completed, and a third support was added.

Photos:

Equipment taken:

• Xiegu G90.
• Umbrella screw-in base.
• 80-10m Linked dipole and 6 metre mast.
• Komunica Power HF-PRO2-PLUS-T loaded vertical whip band tripod (not used – just backup).
• 8 Ah LifePO4 battery.
• Lightweight headphones.
• Smartphone for spotting.
• Painter’s plastic sheet and gardener’s kneeling pad.

Log:

POTA DE-1106

Conclusions:

It was nice to get out on a “real” park activation again (not just from the car in a Park’s car park, but it’s really sad that so many POTA hunters behave as if they were in a contest and don’t care about weaker stations. POTA hunters could, and should, relax more and enjoy the contacts while considering others. It’s ONLY A HOBBY after all!

 73 ’til the next activation!