After being unable to activate for some time due to a long bout of Influenza followed by Covid (thanks to the thoughlesss person who decided it was more important to go and buy their coco pops or whatever from the supermarket rather than to self-isolate and in the supermarket, not even wearing a mask to protect others!), followed by a week where we had one metre of snow to block everyone in, I was ready to get out and do a simple activation.
I chose Weichberg as it is one of the closest SOTA summits at about 30 30-minute drive away from home. It also turns out that the last time that I activated it was April this year, it was after the Winter Bonus had finished, so while I wouldn’t get the 1 normal activation point for the summit, this time I would get the 3 Winter bonus points.
As often is the case, I decided to try some new equipment. Not the 20 & 10m wire beam that I have been working on but simply a new mast base spike after my previous two from DECATHLON failed on me. The last one on my Cyprus “mini.DXpedition”. I have bought two meal peg bases but as they are meant for the thinner carbon-fibre masts, I also made an adapter arrangement consisting of half a broom handle that pushes up inside my small 5-metre fibreglass mast.
Apart from the new base (I also packed the old sun umbrella screw-in base as well) the rest of the equipment would be the tried and tested Xiegu G90 radio and the SOTABeams linked dipole (with a couple of backup antennas as well of course).
I spotted for a 0830 UTC ():30 am local) start in the hope of catching the Long Path on 20 metres down into VK. This meant I would need to get up at about 6:30 am local to be on the summit on time.
The previous 4 days, the bands had been terrible due to one of the largest CMEs of the last 20 years hitting the Ionosphere but I was hoping it would have cleared by Monday morning.
I alerted on SOTAWatch and checked with Mike (2E0YYY) and Ernie (VK3DET) to see if they would be around and indeed Mike agreed to go up to his local HEMA Summit – G/HSP-020 Old Man of Mow.
The Activation
DL/AL-179 Weichberg
Well, I was up long before the alarm went off and rose at 5:30 am rather than 6:30 am, despite taking my time, this still meant that after an uneventful drive down, I was set up and calling CQ by 07:48 UTC. I started on 40 metres hoping that I might catch some DX via the Greyline but I think I was probably about 30 minutes too late.
I did however get a good pile-up of European chasers and despite the mast on the new peg almost falling over at one point (ground problem not a peg problem – once I moved it, it was fine), I managed twelve contacts in fourteen minutes.
At this point, Ernie and Mike sent me messages to say they were almost ready so I lowered the mast, unlinked the 20m links in the antenna and put it back up. Initially, the 20m band was empty but despite that, Ernie put out a call and I could hear him at around 5-3 to 5-4 level – unfortunately, he could not hear me strong enough to work. The difference between an S0-S1 noise level at my end and an S4-5 level at Ernie’s end along with the fact that Ernie was running 400w and I was only running 20w added up to a believable reason but what was to turn out to be the biggest problem was that the propagation skip distance was short (probably as the Ionosphere hadn’t yet recovered from its battering over the last four days). Signals from the UK and even local signals within Germany were 5-9+. Normally on 20m, I struggle to hear stations in the UK, but when I called John M0JWK, we exchanged 59+ reports despite his beam pointing Stateside!
Now I tried for a QSO with Mike 2E0YYY/P and to my surprise he was only about a 53 signal but gave me a 59 report. We wondered how that was possible. Due to high winds, his antenna was lower than usual but that should not make a great difference (if at all, as we both have height through being on top of hills). Mike runs 50w portable to my 20w so if anything Mike should be putting a stronger signal into me than I do into him – and usually he does.
Only later did Mike realise that he was not putting out the normal power level – indeed he could see almost nothing on the output meter. After getting home, Mike investigated further and it turned out to be a faulty cable between the microphone and the radio (we were both running SSB) – so very little audio equates to very little power output.
Overall, for my first activation after Covid, I was happy with the results but I could have done without the icy winds that gave a chill factor taking temps down to -2 or -3°C.
Photos:
DL/AL-179 Weichberg:
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Equipment taken:
Mountaintop travelling 40-litre rucksack.
Xiegu G90 radio.
Komunica Power HF-Pro2-PLUS-T loaded vertical antenna and tripod (not used)
Lamdahalbe 5m mini-mast and new metal base peg.
SotaBeams linked dipole.
4 Ah Eremit LifePO4 battery.
4 Ah LiHV battery(not used).
Painter’s thick plastic sheet (not used).
Gardener’s kneeling pad.
Lightweight headphones (x2).
Smartphone for SOTA spotting.
Log:
DL/AL-179 Weichberg
Conclusions:
The radio conditions on 20m were short skip due to recent disturbences so although I could hear Ernie, VK3DET, a two-way contact was not possible.
All equipment (including the new mast spike) worked well.
I’m glad I went out despite the cold weather – after all, “Wintertime is SOTA activation time” Right?
To be clear, this was not to be my 100th activation of this summit, but rather the activation by many different SOTA activators to get to the “Magic 100”. This would be my 30th activation of the summit, which is the second closest to where I live.
The activation was also to serve as a comparison of radio gear. As I would be travelling to the UK, the following week, I needed to see how effective a 5w radio and simple loaded vertical antenna would be compared to the 20 watts from the G90 into the linked-dipole on a 6-metre mast.
Preparation was easy, in that I had both sets of equipment already in separate bags, ready to go. I only added the Surveyor’s tripod to the equipment to make it simple to put up the dipole.
Ernie VK3DET had said he would be available to listen for me from Australia, so this would be an early action in order to be on this (Drive-up) summit before the long path closes to Australia.
The Activation
DL/AM-001 Peißenberg
The drive down is a route I have taken many times before. On arriving, I went to the large car park, where I could back up the car to the edge of the field and next to the seat. (they don’t get more “drive-up” than this summit). This car park is within the 25m vertical activation zone and provides space for larger antennas than would be possible on the very summit which has a large church sitting on it.
I first set up the large tripod and mast, followed by the linked dipole and then laid out the new development, an “EMF Screen” or “Faraday Screen” copper and nickel coated material and sat my HF-PRO2 loaded whip on a magnetic base on top of it. I had tested this configuration on the antenna analyser at home with good results so I was now hoping to try it out on-air.
For transmitters, I unpacked both the G90 (20w) and G106 (5w) radios and attached each to their antennas -the QRP radio with the simple loaded whip and the G90 with the linked dipole.
A short message to Ernie and he was on frequency and we exchanged 54 7 53 reports on the “large station”. This was not going to be strong enough to be able to switch to the other system although it was receiving fairly well the same stations as the large antenna was.
We decided to give propagation 30 minutes to improve and in the meantime I spotted myself and got calls from ZL4NVW from New Zealand and 4Z4DX from Israel but no other calls from around Europe so the skip was long but signals were low – not the best environment to be comparing antennas and radios under.
After 30 minutes, I called Ernie VK3DET again and the signals in both directions were the same as earlier, so the band was not improving and with time marching on, the QRM from stations close to the frequency was getting worse.
So I decided to call it a day on the testing and said 73 to Ernie and then moved over to 40m to get the needed 4th contact to qualify the summit for its 100th time.
Once people found me of course there were lots more than the one needed contact and after half an hour, there were 22 contacts in the log.
All of this time, the temperatures were below 10°C and so as testing on 40m would also not be practical with the overloaded nature of the band, I decided to call it a day and plan to go out just with the simple system and the QRP radio on one of the following days before making my mind up as to what equipment I will need to take on the plane.
Photos:
DL/AM-001 Peißenberg:
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Equipment taken:
Mountaintop travelling 40-litre rucksack.
Xiegu G90 radio.
Xiegu G106 radio (only used on Rx).
Komunica Power HF-Pro2-PLUS-T loaded vertical antenna with a Faraday screen as the ground plane under a mag mount. (not used)
Lamdahalbe 6m mini-mast and Surveyors tripod.
SotaBeams linked dipole.
4 Ah & 2Ah Eremit LifePO4 batteries.
4 Ah LiHV battery(not used).
Painter’s thick plastic sheet.
Gardener’s kneeling pad.
Lightweight headphones (x2).
Smartphone for SOTA spotting.
Log:
DL/AM-001 Peißenberg
100th activation !!!
Conclusion:
The radio conditions although good on 20m, were not good enough to be able to do radio and antenna tests between DL and VK and trying to test on 40m with so many stations on was also not practical.
I accepted an invitation to the wedding of a radio amateur I have known since my time in Australia and as he was marrying his English lady on the Island of Cyprus. I, of course, could not miss this opportunity to operate a portable radio station from the island in the Mediterranean Sea where I had never been before. I decided this would be a series of activations in HEMA, POTA and SOTA (I suppose I could also have classified this as an IOTA expedition as well as the Island has its own IOTA number (AS-004)). Interestingly in contests, it counts as being part of Asia, a point that makes it attractive to European contest stations who often operate from Cyprus to get continental multipliers for the easy European contacts.
I would be on Cyprus for exactly a week, so I planned 2 activations every couple of days around some other holiday activities and of course the wedding!
I arrived and left on Sunday, so those days were out but Monday was planned for POTA, Wednesday for HEMA and Friday for SOTA with Saturday left initially free for a possible POTA “2-Fer” activation in the town of Paphos where I was staying.
The Activations
Monday 11th September – POTA.
Firstly a POTA park to the northwest of Paphos – 5B-0114 Tombs of the Kings.
This park was literally 15 minutes drive from where I was staying and as the car park is officially within the park grounds, this was a simple, from-the-car, activation using the HF-PRO2 loaded whip on a small magnetic mount on top of the hire car.
Upon unpacking the equipment from my small rucksack to set up in the car I found that one side of my small transportable JVC headphones had come apart with the foam rubber pushing through the fake leather-looking plastic on the headphones. So the first repair was made using electrician’s tape even before the first contact on the holiday was made.
That first contact though was a good one – Ernie VK3DET was there for me again as he had promised to try to be and a contact with 20W of SSB on 20 metres using a multiband loaded whip on a magnetic mount received a 3-3 report from the land down-under. Ernie was about a 5-4 signal. Surprisingly this was not to be the only contact from VK3 – 25 minutes later David VK3BY from Melbourne replied to my CQ calls and we exchanged 5-3 signal reports. Other countries making up the rest of the twelve contacts (10 contacts are needed to qualify a POTA park) were made up of Italy, Poland, Belgium, Spain, Romania and France.
Radio operation started at 08:45 local time (05:45 UTC) and ran for an hour. By the end of the hour – even with the shade within the car I was feeling the heat, so I packed up and went to walk around the park. For just €2.50 it’s a vast area to look into the various excavated tombs but also as this is on a promontory, to look out to sea with the clear blue waters. I know I only saw possibly half of the park but after about an hour of walking in the heat (wearing my wide-brimmed “Tilley” hat), it was enough, so I headed back to the car and then to the large supermarket for supplies as I was staying in a self-catering apartment,
After the mid-day heat, the afternoon brought another planned POTA park activation. This one needed a 20 km drive to the southeast of Paphos to the Aprrodites Rocks where the forest is a national park and number 5B-0005 Aprodites Rock Forest. The car park for the beach by the rocks is within the forest park area, so this again would be a car-based activation using the same loaded whip on the car roof and 20 watts on 20 metres.
The difference with this activation was that the car was already hot even though it was 3 pm local time, the heat sat in the air and getting the needed number of contacts was more difficult. Add to that an extra complication that the 4AH LifePo battery’s built-in management system decided to cut the power to my radio about halfway through the activation resetting all defaults in the Xiegu G90 radio (which doesn’t like power to be cut without warning).
The black case on the radio is not an advantage in mid-30s (Centigrade) temperatures even though I have covered the top side of the radio with white sticky-backed plastic after a POTA activation in 5B – the case is too hot to touch!
The battery problem was easily resolved in that I have a backup 2AH LifePO battery and once that was connected, I was back on the air to collect more needed contacts.
This time there were no VKs in the log (it would be the middle of the night with them and the long path had long ago closed). Calls came in however from Sweden, Spain, Greece, Italy, France and North Macedonia.
Again this was an hour-long activation from 12:00 – 13:00 UTC and after completing the last call, I packed away the radio gear and headed down to the beach to see what all the fuss about the rocks was – as you will see from the pictures – they are impressive!
It was about a 40-minute drive back to my apartment and time to meet up with the other wedding guests for a meal. After that, I was able to enter my logs into POTA, so that those chasers would already see the contacts logged (in POTA only the activator does the logging work, unlike HEMA and SOTA where both the activator and the chaser have to log the contact).
Wednesday 13th. September – HEMA.
After Tuesday was taken up with a tourist bus tour, Wednesday was planned as a HEMA day with two first activations of summits. Indeed this expedition was the first time ANY HEMA summits have been activated on Cyprus!
The first summit was 5B/HCY-011 Axylon near the village of Aksylou about 20 km northeast of Paphos.
The drive was fairly straightforward however the access track towards the summit quickly gets difficult for a small rental car and with only limited parking possibilities, I decided to park by the village water tower which is within the 25-metre activation zone and with some space to put up the mast and linked dipole antenna this time.
It was 9:15 am local time (06:15 UTC) by the time I had got set up and there he was again – Ernie VK3DET, first into this log as well – making also the first VK – 5B HEMA contact as well as the first contact to an, up to this point, never-activated HEMA summit. From here, with the better antenna, Ernie was 5-8 with me and he gave me a 5-6 report. It’s still quite amazing what can be done with low power and a simple antenna when you are on the air at the right time and propagation is on your side!
The following contact was also a surprise, Andy M7FTM was on his way to work in Dorset, mobile from his car running 10 watts to a whip antenna and coming in at about 5-4 with some QSB.
The following calls were from all over Europe – France, Macedonia, Georgia (country not US state), Russia, Slovenia, Italy and Poland.
I had planned to activate my second HEMA late in the afternoon but as the bridegroom’s stag night was planned for the evening, I decided to head to the 2nd summit from the first hoping that Google Maps on my phone would find the way for me.
It did and by 11:00 am local time (0800 UTC), I arrived at 5B/HCY-001 Trachonas (to find this summit look for Villa Breeze on the map and follow the track past the water tower behind it). The views from this summit are fantastic – the blue Mediterranean Sea and the rolling hills down to it as well as the countryside around are truly beautiful. One thing to beware of however is the undergrowth which consists of mostly prickly weeds. The ground is also very hard and I had to search around to find a spot to put the mast base spike in the ground. Once I had done this I ran out the linked dipole wires across the ground, trying not to tangle them in the spikey plants. I raised the 6m mast up and went back to peg out the antenna elements which also act as guy ropes. In the meantime what had been a nice cooling breeze in the hot sunshine turned into a light wind but even that light wind was enough to blow the mast over. As I went back to the mast, I could see that the mast was fine but the Decathalon peg-based (or De_crap-a-lot as I am now calling equipment from this company) had broken the base support in that the nut, which is only set in plastic with no strengthening, had bent over and could not be simply pushed back as the plastic had broken. This is a horrible design. This same problem has happened to me before but on the advice from several SOTA activators, they said I must have simply got “a bad one” last time, I bought a new one and this is what happened. The design is simply not thought through. De_crap-a-lot, I will not buy from you again!
Of course, I have a backup for such let-downs. I packed the mast and Linked Dipole away and took out the Komunica Power HF-PRO-2-Plus-T loaded whip and my converted photo tripod and radials. Once that was all set up, I could hear a VK6 station still on 20m but with the now limited antenna and late time for the propagation, he could not hear me.
I spotted myself on the HEMA site and the DX-Cluster in the hope of making 4 contacts to make the journey out to this summit worthwhile. After a lot of effort, I managed one WWFF contact and two HEMA-to-SOTA contacts in Greece, Italy (x2), and Austria.
At 12:15 local time, I decided to pack up and head back to the apartment to get something to eat, rest and then prepare for the evening.
Friday 15th September – SOTA
With the wedding now having taken place (a great success, where everything went very well and all were happy if a little drunk later on), Friday would be a SOTA day. I knew that getting contacts would be easier due to the number of chasers that monitor SOTAWatch compared to HEMA and POTA however I would have to rely upon the HF-PRO-2 loaded whip as the antenna. As it was to turn out, it did a great job!
The first SOTA summit of this “Mini-DXpedition” was one with no name 5B/CY-042, which I chose to call Chapel of Agiou Mama as that is a little further down the track, so following signs to the chapel take you to this No-Name summit just south of the village of Koili which is about a 20-minute drive north of Paphos.
It seems that in Cyprus, every summit near a village has a water tower on it as several have and this one also had one. Similar to the ground covering that I found on Wednesday this location also had a lot of prickly plants and the ground was again rock-hard so there was no way that the now fragile, damaged Decathlon mast spike would work here, so I set up the HF-Pro and tripod next to what I think is the pump building, which provided me with a little shade from the sun.
So how well, did this “compromise” antenna work from this small summit? How about a call from Paul VK5PAS in South Australia as the second contact? That, with true 59 / 55 signal reports!
I even managed an S2S contact with Andrew VK1AD/P on his SOTA summit VK1/AC-043 in the Australian Capital Territory.
For all of those who say Life’s too short for QRP – look how just 20 watts of SSB to a loaded vertical whip has performed this week from Cyprus. OK, these were not 59+20 dB reports each way but those reports indicate the stations are breaking their licence rules which clearly state “only use sufficient power to make the contact”. Here 20 watts is getting 55->59 reports from around Europe and 52->55 reports from the other side of the globe!
This set-up provided 17 contacts in 20 minutes from this summit. see the log below for the full details.
Rather than heading back to Paphos and going to my second SOTA summit in the cooler, late afternoon, I decided to head straight on to the SOTA Summit 5B/CY-035 Mazi relying again on the Google Maps app playing through Android Auto in the rental car to get me there.
This time, things did NOT go to plan … The directions were fine until it told me to turn off the main road onto a stone track which was a little wider than the car itself. I did not turn that way thinking that it was wrong and that even if I should have done it, I would be brought back via another route. I carried on and the app kept giving me directions, in this case, it took me onto smaller and smaller roads and eventually after it took obvious “short-cuts” between the more “normal” roads, I knew this was really taking too long for the relatively short distance between the summits. There was no way to turn around, so I decided to follow the first sign that directed me back to Paphos and my apartment and then to “re-group” after something to eat. The route back to Paphos was also “interesting” with the road full of goats with no shepherd to be seen and another place where there were tens of quad bikes heading to some waterfalls. Eventually, I reached Coral Bay, which I knew was up the coast from Paphos. So I eventually found my way back onto known roads after a nearly 2-hour detour.
What had happened was that the phone had lost cell coverage (and hence access to the Internet) just after the track where it wanted me to turn off and although I had downloaded the local region map to the phone, something was not working correctly with that map it seems.
After some food and rest, I decided to try again and this time when I reached the small track (which actually had a sign pointing down it with a road number on it!) – I took it and this was a road NOT to take a hire car down (even the cross-over model – that the rental companies call a mini-SUV, which I had). Part of the route is concreted, part of it is pure stones and part is a mixture of surfaces with potholes everywhere. Steep climbs and drops and bushes sticking out to scratch the car along the route test the driver. Google Maps likes to take short-cuts it seems, which means that you use even smaller roads – at Mazi, it is best to head towards the couple of houses there and then head back along and up to the summit (as I found on the return route back to the main road). In any case, upon arriving, I realised there was NO space to park off the road in what looked like olive plant fields. I did find a road junction and was able to position the car in the corner so that anyone coming along with a smaller vehicle would be able to get past. I hoped that no tractors or larger trucks would arrive while I was operating – luckily no one came by.
I clambered up the soil wall at the side of the road and found a spot where I could put down my painter’s sheet to sit on and again set up the tripod and HF-PRO-2. Even with a working mast peg, this would not have been the place to put up the linked dipole antenna because of lack of space.
Once set up and self-spotted on SOTAWatch, I had a constant flow of calls (24 in 14 minutes) – no Intercontinental DX this time but calls from all around Europe and two SOTA S2S contacts – see the log below for details.
Getting to this summit took some doing. Going there again, if I ever get a chance to return to Cyprus, would of course be easier – for those reading this report while planning your activation of Mazi, I hope these tips will help.
At the end of the day, this activation again amazed me as to what is possible with low power and a simple antenna system. I was glad to get back to the apartment that evening for a rest.
That was supposed to be the last activation of the holiday but as the bridegroom wanted to work some HF and I had a “backup” POTA “2-fer” ready to cover if the others had not worked out, we decided to play some radio on Saturday…
Saturday 16th September – POTA 2-Fer?
After a late breakfast, Adrian M0GLJ and I headed over to the Paphos Archaeological Reserve POTA 5B-0113 and after paying the €4.50 entrance fee headed through the park towards the Paphos Liighthouse POTA 5B-0067 and found a shaded area in the lighthouse area.
This was to be the same set-up as on the previous activation, the HF-PRO2 antenna on the tripod with the radial wires laid out roughly around the base. I set the slider on the antenna to the position for 20 metres, connected everything up and tuned the band. It was very quiet. I checked all connections and even ran the ATU in the radio, no difference. I did find one Italian station and called him but while he could hear me, we could not make a full contact. This was a Saturday morning, the band would normally be full of stations. Tuning up and down the band, I could hear blips at irregular intervals but no more stations.
I decided to switch to 40 metres reset the antenna and tuned around there – nothing, not one station!
I wondered whether the radio was faulty in some way but all seemed fine – I changed AGC settings pre-amp settings and all made no difference. This demonstration activation of HF radio was certainly not going the way I had hoped. Adrian had his Yaesu HT along and had found the local FM repeater. He put a call through there but no one came back.
Then I thought I might know what had happened. On Cyprus there is a UK Royal Airforce base which has a Megawatt over-the-horizon radar (OTHR) station – if that was operating, it could flatten all receivers in a several hundred kilometres radius and we were probably 45 km away, from where we were.
I decided if that was the case, we had no chance and we both decided to call it a day with the radio, take a look at some of the excurvations on the way out and then head for Coral Bay for lunch.
As it turned out, checking the propagation reports that evening, there had been a series of HF radio blackouts at around the time we were trying to operate. While conditions during the week had been so good up to that point, it hadn’t crossed my mind that what we had was, in fact, a radio blackout, which it seems was in fact the case. Just unlucky timing on our part!
It would have been nice to have activated the “two parks in one” 2-Fer POTA location but I can only say that the rest of the activations went off very well despite a couple of problems and Saturday was just “one of those things”.
Sunday, I flew back home to Germany.
Photos:
POTA 5B-0114 Tombs of the Kings
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POTA 5B-0005 Aphrodites Rock forest
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HEMA 5B/HCY-011 Axylon
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HEMA 5B/HCY-001 Trachonas
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SOTA 5B/CY-042 NoName (in Koili village)
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SOTA 5B/CY-035 Mazi
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POTA 5B-0067 and 0113 Lighthouse in Archaeological Reserve
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Equipment taken:
Raddy 20-litre mini-rucksack.
Xiegu G90.
Komunica Power HF-Pro2-PLUS-T loaded vertical antenna. (used with mag mount for the first two activations or on a tripod with radials for the later activations).
Single-magnet car roof antenna mount (used for both POTA activations).
Modified mini photo tripod with clip-on radials
Lamdahalbe 6m mini-mast.
SotaBeams linked dipole.
De_crap-a-lot mast base peg (until it broke).
4 Ah LifePO4 Eremit battery.
2 Ah LifePO4 Eremit battery.
Painter’s thick plastic sheet and gardener’s kneeling pad.
Lightweight headphones.
Smartphone to spot and back-channel comms.
Logs:
POTA 5B-0114 Tombs of the Kings
POTA 5B-0005 Aphrodites Rock forest
HEMA 5B/HCY-011 Axylon
HEMA 5B/HCY-001 Trachonas
SOTA 5B/CY-042 NoName (in Koili village)
SOTA 5B/CY-035 Mazi
Conclusions:
The weather was never a problem on any of these activations but a wide-brimmed “Tilley” hat and lots of sunscreen definitely helped.
The Xiegu G90 worked reliably although it got a little too hot on some of the activations.
The surprise top performer turned out to be the Komunica Power HF-PRO-2-Plus-T – that loaded antenna works better than it should. The linked dipole when I had it up worked well as well but of course, the failure of the Decathalon mast mount meant I could not use that on the summits that I had planned to.
It is very hard at times to get the needed contacts in the POTA and HEMA schemes but you are fighting off the callers when operating SOTA.
When you think all is going fantastically, the Sun can hiccup and spoil what should have been a simple activation on the Saturday, by causing a total radio blackout!
The idea of World HEMA Day is to get as many HEMA activators out as possible to try for H2H contacts. With the recent expansion of HEMA into Malaysia (West & East) and Canada as well as across Europe, with good propagation and good timing, someone may manage some good DX H2H contacts. For me with the times I could get out, my target was around Europe but as you’ll read surprisingly there was some DX around (if chaser stations, not activator ones).
My original plan was to activate two summits on Friday afternoon and one on Saturday but when the one on Saturday became difficult to reach as roads were closed for re-surfacing and I decided on a different summit, this became a possibility for a “family day out” with my wife and dog. Seeing some countryside that we have never been to, having a nice outing in the good weather and topping it off with a nice meal at a country restaurant.
So with that extra work on Saturday, I decided to keep the Friday activation down to my most local HEMA summit and as it turned out that was a good decision with additional road-closed delays affecting that activation.
As I will be heading to Cyprus in just over a week, for a week (including some radio activations), these two activations were also to serve as equipment tests. The first just using my normal radio station in a 40L rucksack set-up and the second trying to operate with a smaller (5 metre) mast and a smaller ground peg.
The Activation
Friday 1st September 2023 DL/HBY-064 Berndorfer Buchet
The usually simple drive to this HEMA/SOTA summit was complicated by a main road being closed the day before. While there was an alternate route, the fact the normal route was closed was not shown on the road until after I got past the exit for that other route. Indeed I only knew that I could not turn right as normal in Fischen until I got to the roadworks themselves. I had to turn around a head back about 3 kilometres to the alternate exit – this added about 20-25 minutes to what is normally a 35-40 minute run. Luckily I had set off early and was able to be set up on the summit to activate as planned for the start of “World HEMA Day” which ran from 1200 UTC (2 pm local time) on Friday, September 1st to 1200 UTC on Saturday, September 2nd.
The activation brought in contacts from around Europe. I started on 40m and there were several strong Italian stations on the band to start with then I suspect the critical frequency rose over 7 MHz as propagation became very NVIS-like and the second part of the hour that I activated was almost all stations from within Germany. It was a pleasant time chatting with other amateurs but as I had alerted to operate on 20m as well, after about an hour I decided to move to that band and re-spot myself using the new “HEMA Assistant” Smartphone app. This app appeared to be very slow in refreshing its list of spotted stations but even with the slow response (which wasn’t a problem on Saturday. It was some kind of temporary problem – possibly with my internet access from the summit). The app did show however that I was the only HEMA activator out at the time I was on my summit. Among the 40m contacts I did have a summit-to-summit contact however and that was with Ben DL2DXA on GMA Summit DA/SX-224 near Dresden.
After switching to 20m and hitting the tune button on the radio, the Linked dipole which would normally tune straight away was causing issues. I lowered the mast again and found that the 17m link had come open. Looking at this, I could see that the wires were taught and the solder joints were looking a little “aged” so one maintenance task when I got home was to adjust where all wires were tied into the links and to resolder all joints to the 2mm power connectors which I use for these links. This was exactly the kind of thing that I wanted to find before my trip to Cyprus.
Back to 20m – after reconnecting the 17m link and raising the 6 metre mast again. the G90 tuned the antenna quickly – actually with this (resonant) antenna I could turn the internal tuner off but it does help to spot these kinds of problems. I decided to tune around on 20m and while there was not a lot of activity – this was about 13:15 UTC, I came across Tony VK5KI on Kangaroo Island in South Australia working an XE station (who I could not hear) – unfortunately I waited too long to call Tony as I wasn’t sure when the other station signed off. Tony was about an S7 so a contact might have been possible. I suspect Tony may have been going QRT in any case as it would have been approaching midnight with him.
Further searching on 20m brought some Eastern European stations in a net but apart from that the band was very quiet, so I found a free frequency and spotted myself both on HEMA and on the DX Cluster. Unfortunately about a quarter of an hour of CQing brought no responses. As it now started to get colder and there was a possibility of showers forecast, I decided to call it a day, knowing my home route would be slightly longer given the road closure, so that was my first activation for World HEMA Day completed.
Saturday 2nd September DL/HBY-038 Staufenberg
I had planned the summit Rentschen (DL/HBY-052), which is a 45 minute’s drive to my south for my Saturday summit but for that one, I was forewarned of the road closure and so for an extra 5-minute drive, this time north from where I live, I decided to do the first activation of Staufenberg (DL/HBY-038). This is a literal drive-up summit (as is Rentschen) and for anyone looking for a really easy summit to activate in a beautiful country area, this might be a good choice.
We set off at 9 a.m. only to hear that part of our route on the Autobahn was down to one lane from three following an accident and to expect a delay of at least 20 minutes filtering through the one, still open lane. So, we told our GPS to seek a different route and we went cross country. Unfortunately, this route was to cost me. While going through the industrial outskirts of a town with minimal traffic I sped up to get through some lights before they changed only to find a speed camera waiting to trap people on the other side just before the speed limit increased from 50 to 60 km/h – flash … I now wait to see what the financial damage will be!
Soon after I had set up the station, the air-raid sirens went off in the area for about 10 minutes. As this was at exactly 10:30 a.m. local time, I presume it was a test of the emergency alarm system in the area and not that my mighty 20W of RF had triggered some alarm HI.
As well as the normal equipment in the car, for this activation I had brought along my 5-metre squid pole, which will be light to carry for the Cyprus trip. Along with that, I intended to use the decathlon base spike to support the base and the normal sun Umbrella screw-in base is not practical for the trip. The first obvious limitation was that the thin 5-metre pole was very loose in the base but after searching around for some cord in my rucksack, this limitation was addressed and the cord is now packed within the base so that it stays with it. I was of course unable to use the top section of the pole so the antenna’s feedpoint was at around 4m AGL meaning that the end cords needed to go out a fair distance and that the 40 metre end sections of the linked dipole were quite close to the ground. Use of this antenna with with my 60 or 80m extensions would not work with such a low mast however as I rarely use those bands that is not such a great loss.
Once the antenna was set up in the grassed area alongside the small chapel on this summit, the radio was unpacked and set up on my normal plastic sheet and I was ready to start on 40m to see who I could find.
Before spotting I took a tune around and found Peter in Dusseldorf with a strong signal calling CQ and getting no replies despite his special event callsign of DQ23IVG for the Invicta games being run in Dusseldorf this year. (The Invicta games are for injured soldiers – from any nation – to compete in sport despite their injuries and form part of their recovery and return to as normal a life as possible).
Next, I checked the HEMA Assistant app (which worked with little delay on this activation) to see that Dave G8XDD was out on the G/HSE-019 HEMA summit in the UK. After a couple of tries, I managed to break into his pile-up and got the first H2H into the log.
I then found a clear frequency and spotted myself via the app. 40m was terrible with QRM from multiple contests that were in progress (which is the main reason I rarely activate on a Saturday). There were callers but they were crushed by splatter from the station who started up a kc or so away from the frequency I was using without checking first. Bad operating? Yes, but these are crocodile contesters – most don’t listen for stations under an S9 signal level – perhaps their radios aren’t capable of it from all the stray RF coming back into the front end from their own linear amplifiers? As I have said before there are good contesters but unfortunately they are the exception, the majority don’t care about other spectrum users.
After fighting to get contacts on 40m I decided to move to 20 metres to try my luck there. At this point I found another advantage of the lower mast – I was able to un-clip the 20m links in the antenna without lowering the mast. while this is just a small point it does make the operation simpler. Once on 20m, I wished I had moved there earlier. The contesters had not yet arrived in their hoards and the band was relatively quiet, enabling me to find a good frequency, spot myself on HEMA and start calling CQ.
The first station who called was Uwe as IK7/DF3DAD a solid 59 signal from Ginosa down in the “heel of the Italian boot”. Following Uwe was Don G0RQL from Cornwall England who had tried on 40m but on 20m this was a 59/58 easy contact.
There then followed a nice stream of chasers from Poland and the UK. One Karl 2E0FEH told me he had just worked a HEMA activator, Bill M0DXT, but he was not spotted on the HEMA list so Karl agreed to do that. Of course, Bill was back on the QRM-band 40m but I would try after all the aim of World HEMA Day was to get as many H2H contacts as possible. As soon as I announced that I was moving to 40m of course I got more calls on 20m, so with those logged and happy, I then switched back over to 40m to go and hunt Bill. Again the lower antenna meant a quick change of bands was possible and I found Bill on the frequency that Karl had told me he was on but unfortunately, two Italian stations were also having a long chat on the same frequency – I suspect neither Bill in the UK nor the two Italians could hear each other but unfortunately with me being in the middle I could hear both. In any case, I battled on and in the gaps in the Italian’s transmissions, I managed to get the H2H contact in with Bill M0DXTT on G/HLD-043 for my second WHD H2H contact.
All of this time my wife had been walking the dog along several of the clearly marked walking tracks that go off from the summit and I decided that after an hour of operation, it was time to pack up and head off to the beer garden restaurant in the Bonstetten village for lunch.
This had been ideal activating weather and the sunshine through the trees and some very good food for a reasonable price in the beer garden just made it a perfect day – well actually only half a day as it was altogether a 4-hour round trip. None of us were eager to do too much more however when we got home. Some good weather, fresh air and good food made this an ideal day for all three of us!
Photos:
DL/HBY-064 Berndorfer Buchet:
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DL/HBY-038 Staufenberg:
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Equipment taken:
Mountaintop travelling 40-litre rucksack.
Xiegu G90 radio.
Komunica Power HF-Pro2-PLUS-T loaded vertical antenna with a modified mini photo tripod with clip-on radials. (not used)
Let’s hope that more HEMA H2H contacts were made on Saturday. On Friday, I was the only HEMA Spotted station on! The problem on Saturday was as always, the contest stations.
The equipment tested on the Friday activation had me repairing and adjusting the linked dipole so that the links no longer jump out. The smaller mast and mast base tested on the Saturday activation worked fine and in fact with the antenna wire a little lower I was able to switch between 40m and 20m without lowering the mast, however, this set-up will not let me use the 60 or 80m extensions to the antenna.
Each year I try to take part in the International Lighthouse and Lightship weekend (www.illw.net) however over the COVID years was not able to and although last year I was staying in Lindau (where the only two lighthouses within a reasonable distance from my home are) I got food poisoning and had to return home before I could even set-up in the park. This year I decided not to risk the expense of a hotel room and rather drive the 1.5-2 hours down on either the Saturday or the Sunday of the event – depending upon what the weather did (which has been very unpredictable of late).
Since last year, the large car park on Lindau Island where I would normally park, has been closed. Street parking is limited to 30 minutes in most places and in a few up to 90 minutes. I expected to need 3-4 hours of parking time. This is a deliberate action by the council as they want to reduce the number of visitors on the island in cars and rather have them park on the mainland and take a bus (not free in either case). There is however one multi-storey, public car park belonging to the Sports Centre. This of course fills quickly and is not located close to the park between the two lighthouses where I wanted to set up to activate.
Searching around, I found another option – the station car park, while small (and with 70% of the spots reserved for long-term renters as it turned out) but is relatively close to “my” park. The best way to use this is to check in on arrival using a smartphone App and at €2.50 / hour, the price is “OK” – cheaper than the sports centre. It also has the advantage that as the end of your booked time approaches you are sent an alert with an invitation to extend for another hour (or more).
So my plan was set – drive down early to avoid traffic on the Autobahn, hope to get a spot in the Railway station car park with a fall-back of the Sports Centre and pack all of the radio gear as usual into my 40L rucksack, but then mount this on my shopping trolley frame so that I can pull everything behind me.
To make sure I had everything packed that was needed I went out on Friday morning, just to a spot in the fields where I can park the car outside of the village where I live.
Rather than taking some extra support such as a screw-in base or a tripod, I wanted to use the shopping trolley as the mast support. My original plan was to use it with my 10 metre mast but the tests on Friday morning showed that was not going to work with it falling over before I could get the Inverted-V antenna pinned out. So a switch to one of my old reliable 6-metre masts was made and that was supported well by the trolley.
After the test run, the gear was packed up and taken home, the LifePO battery “topped off” and everything was packed in the back of the car ready for a 5:30am start on Saturday morning!
The Activation
ILLW DE-0138 and DE-0140
After having a good drive down to Lindau, arriving 20 minutes earlier than expected, I managed to get one of the only three empty parking spots at the railway station. It’s strange not putting a paper ticket on the windscreen but I went through the steps in the app as advised and it all functioned as it should. From the GPS in my phone, it knew which car park I was at and I booked 4 hours (I expected to need about 3.5 hours, so a little more to cover any problems, was probably wise).
The walk around the harbour to Römerschanze Park pulling my little trolley only took about 10 minutes but in that time the trolley lost one of its mudguards never to be seen again (I checked on the way back but I think the street cleaners will have cleaned it up in the meantime).
On arriving in the park apart from a couple of lads in one corner chatting away, it was empty – which, apart from visiting dogs (and their owners) was the story of my stay. Although there were some tourists later, none of them were brave enough to come and ask what I was doing.
I had also brought along a small fisherman’s tent (more of a sunshade) which as the weather looked like it was going to be a hot and sunny day could give me protection if needed. I decided to leave that until I had set up my antenna and radio and as it happened, I was able to get enough shade from the trees above me that I never unpacked the tent.
The antenna (a linked dipole in an Inverted-V configuration) went up without any problems, with the mast supported by the shopping trolley and I managed to peg the ends of the cords without going outside of the grassed area. This is where with the 10 metre mast, I would have needed less space but in the whole time I was there, I only had to call out once to warn someone before they almost walked into the antenna.
It was still early enough for the 20m long path into Australia and New Zealand and indeed I heard one ZL and several VK stations but trying to call them with just 20w and a wire at 5 metres above ground was difficult. I could not get a chance of a contact due to the QRO home stations with their beams. It was obvious that my signal was able to get to VK however as I had done so on my trial run on Friday morning and there were a couple of QRO UK stations who would deliberately call at the end of my call so that, they knew I was calling and if I were to get a response from the VK station I would not hear it. This used to be the behaviour of some Continental hams, now it seems the M and even the G calls are the worst. Shame on you UK Hams – you know who you are!
Indeed high power stations either calling over the top, splattering nearby or simply calling CQ on top of a frequency where I was working a station became the norm during the day. This often happens when a major contest is on however it seems now that even without a major contest, so many stations simply behave badly on a weekend. It may be a reflection on the times that we live in rather than only being a problem in the Ham radio community but it’s there. It may only be a small percentage of hams but it seems to be spreading, like their over-modulated signals.
My best DX was W1AW/1 in Vermont, where I believe there may have been a QSO party (contest) going on – he gave me a 59 report but I suspect I was nothing like that. Other than that in the three hours of operation, I got many contacts from around Europe on both 20 and 40 metres. Of those however only four were lighthouse-to-lighthouse contacts – I heard and tried to call over 10 different lighthouse stations but again we got the “I don’t care about you low power portable stations, I WANT this contact” attitude from many home QRO stations.
When I managed to find a free frequency (which was not easy), I would listen specifically for other lighthouse stations to give them priority. Unfortunately, it seems most of the operators at the Lighthouse stations just considered the field-day station as a special event station to work lots of stations from and did not think so much about the Lighthouse-to-Lighthouse contact component of the event.
I will ask for something to be put on the ILLW website requesting lighthouse stations to specifically listen every 15 or 20 minutes for other lighthouse stations, rather than just going back to the strongest station in the “rabble”. Such L2L-like actions are common in SOTA, WWFF, HEMA, POTA and GMA so why not in ILLW?
After three hours and about two pages of contacts (and the need for a bathroom visit), I decided to call it a day and pack up and head back to the car.
The use of the shopping trolley/rucksack combination works well when wanting to pack up as well as when setting up and it took no time at all to get everything packed and leave the park. As I said earlier, I looked for the missing mudflap on my way back to the car but it had gone. A shame as it stopped the trolley wheel from rubbing on the rucksack.
As I left the car park, there was a VERY HAPPY driver there to take up the now one available parking spot in the railway station car park!
Photos:
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Equipment taken:
Xiegu G-90 20w HF radio.
Lambdahalbe 6m mast.
SOTABeams linked dipole antenna (modified).
Komunica Power HF-Pro2 loaded vertical antenna and tripod (not used).
4Ah Eremit LifePO4 battery.
4 Ah 3S LiHV battery (not used).
Lightweight headphones.
Smartphone for spotting.
Shopping trolley with 40L rucksack.
Conclusions:
The shopping trolley as a method of transporting all equipment in one go is a good solution – now that it lacks one mudguard it will need to be modified to lift the rucksack up a little.
For a single-person activation of two lighthouses, I think I did well, however, it could have been a lot better had the lighthouse stations specifically listened for other lighthouse stations. The abuse of the bands by the QRO stations is not going to go away, so if an event must be on a weekend when there are many more of these animals around, some process needs to be put in place to allow the contacts that the event is set up to promote (in this case Lighthouse-to-Lighthouse) to take place.
As I was travelling to the “Ham Radio” in Friedrichshafen, I looked around for a POTA park in the area to activate and found the ONLY one anywhere in the area was Riedlepark, right in the centre of the town. I was amazed that there are not any other POTA-certified parks in the area. Perhaps more will be added soon?
I would have very limited time available, so I Alerted about a week before to activate on Friday lunchtime as I had other commitments at the Ham radio show during the day I would have to go without lunch to be able to activate.
Looking at the official Baden Wurttemburg government mapping system, I could find the limits of the park and the car park by the children’s home is fully within the park boundaries, so I decided, given the limited time, that is where I would activate from. To avoid carrying a lot of equipment, I decided to just take the small QRP Xiegu G106 radio and my Komunica Power HF-PRO2 loaded vertical antenna.
For a SOTA activation with the number of chasers around Europe, this would be more than sufficient and even with a weak signal, I would be almost guaranteed the needed 4 SOTA contacts for any summit as long as I could put out a spot. For POTA, at least in Germany, the story is different. There are far fewer chasers and added to that 10 contacts are needed. I would need to work hard to get the points but I had hoped that with the density of radio amateurs around Friedrichshafen for the largest meeting of radio hams in Europe – I would be fine on ground wave. this was not the case and as you will read below, it was a hard battle to get the 10 contacts in the time I had available.
In any case, the small radio pack and antenna and mag mount were packed into the car along with the needed computer/recording set up and clothes needed for my short two-day trip and I left on Friday morning at 06:30 am local time.
The Activation
POTA DA-0156
After having a busy morning at the Hamfest, I broke away at around 12:15, headed back to the car and drove to the park. Well, at least that was the plan. It seems that the GPS didn’t know that some of the roads in the area are now one way and the result was another 15 minutes added to what should have been a 7-8 minute drive from the Messe where Ham Radio is held.
At least when I got to the site there was plenty of space, so I went and bought a parking permit from the machine which would allow me to stay until 13:33 at the very latest. That should be more than enough time – right? …
I thought my best chance would be on 40 metres but despite hearing and calling a few stations and spotting myself in the POTA app – I got no contacts. I was starting to think that perhaps 4-5 watts was simply not going to “cut it” with the vertical antenna.
Luckily I decided to switch to 20m and there I was able to call other stations and get contacts into the log. I did spot and call CQ for some time and I guess of the 10 needed contacts that I managed to squeeze in my available time, I think 3, perhaps 4 were actual POTO “chasers” two were SOTA activators and the remainder were all simply stations calling CQ on the 20m band.
I had to fight for most of the contacts and there was a big gap after the fifth contact when I thought I would not get any more contacts. As I hoped this would be another “First activation” of a park, I really need to get the full 10 contacts. Thankfully with about 4 minutes to go before my parking permit ran out, I closed off the tenth contact.
Then it was time to quickly pack up and head back to the show, where my teammates were just about start another round of interviews with dealers and associations.
Another FIRST POTA activation (despite some competition).
Photos:
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POTA DA-0156:
Equipment taken:
Xiegu G-106 radio.
Komunica Power HF-Pro2 loaded vertical antenna with a three-magnet car roof mount base.
2Ah Eremit LifePO4 battery.
2.5 Ah 3S LiPO battery.
Lightweight headphones.
Smartphone for spotting.
Log:
DA-0156 RiedlePark, Friedrichshafen
Conclusions:
I have been spoilt with years of SOTA activations. The infrastructure in place for SOTA to have chasers call you is simply not there or does not work as well for the newer schemes like HEMA and POTA.
If the reports I got back were true (which I believe they were), the little G106 and the HF-PRO2 are a combination that works well on 20m, but not so well on 40m. Despite that at the show I bought a Komunica Power HF-Explorer-Mini as a smaller loaded vertical to use with the G106 radio. We’ll see how well (or not) that smaller and lighter combination works over the summer.
Fresh back from my trip to Austria, it looked like John VK6NU was going out while on holiday in Ireland to an EI SOTA summit. Mike (2E0YYY) would also head out to give John a call and to round it off if we both could get to our summits early enough Ernie VK3DET had offered to try for a contact. So a contact with either John or Mike would be both an H2S and S2S contact as my chosen summit is in both schemes.
The set-up would be the tried and tested G90 plus Linked dipole and the 6m mast, all of which pack into, or onto my medium-sized rucksack. However, after struggling with carrying the rucksack over the last few days, I decided to try something different and bought a shopping trolley with fairly large wheels from the local Aldi store for €30. when the shopping bag is removed my 40-litre rucksack sits perfectly on the frame and is held there using the existing straps and clips on the rucksack.
As the Long path window to VK had been opening earlier over the last few days, this was going to be an early start to be on air by 0630 UTC – meaning I needed to set the alarm for 0630 local time (0430 UTC) to get up, drive to the parking area, walk with the (as yet untested) trolley to the summit and set-up the gear ready for operation.
The Activation
Berndorfer Buchet – HEMA DL/HBY-064 and SOTA DL/AM-180.
This is my closest summit and it took just over 30 minutes to get to the car parking area early in the morning.
Once parked, it was a single action to take the rucksack on the trolley out of the rear of the car, so that saved a couple of minutes. I set off, half expecting to have a problem with the trolley before I got to the summit and then I would need to stop and “de-strap” the rucksack from the trolley and carry it for the rest of the distance. Luckily this did not happen and the trolley served me well, even when “bush-bashing” up the last (steepest) part of the access, where no clear path is available, there is high grass with nettles and thistles in it and the ground is covered with dead twigs and leaves.
When reaching the summit, I was able to leave the masts in the side of the rucksack, strapped to the trolley, get the linked dipole out of the top of the rucksack, unpack it and thread it onto the top of the mast, run the wires out to roughly where I thought I would be tieing them off on trees and then raise the mast to its full height. This is an improvement on the usual process of screwing the sun umbrella base into the ground, adding the mast and so on.
After also taking my thick painter’s sheet out of the top of the rucksack, I opened up the front of the pack to take out the radio and battery. This whole process worked very well and overall saved me at least 5 minutes, possibly 10.
Once I was set up, I sent Mike 2E0YYY/P a message via the “signal” messaging app (this summit has a good cellphone and hence Internet coverage) to find his frequency. A couple of minutes later we had a contact, weaker than usual but good. At this point Ernie, VK3DET tried to listen for me and gave me a call. Although I could just hear Ernie, it was difficult and again a lot weaker signal than expected. It was no surprise (given the power difference) that he could not hear me. That’s the way the bands are sometimes – however, looking into this later I think I know the reason why;
MUF during the activation – this explains some of the QSB and other problems on 20m (remember as a general rule, you will get the best DX conditions on the highest band under the MUF line). In short, 17m and even 15m might have been a better choice rather than 20m:
Being a weekend, there was of course the hassle of wide splattering contest stations (and wanna-bees) so finding a free frequency was especially hard on 40 metres but in the end, I got a few contacts in the log from around Europe as you will see from the logs below.
After packing up, thankfully, the route back to the car with the trolley was no more difficult than on the way up.
Photos:
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Equipment taken:
Mountaintop travelling 40-litre rucksack mounted on a shopping trolley.
Xiegu G90.
Komunica Power HF-Pro2-PLUS-T loaded vertical antenna. (not used)
Modified mini photo tripod with clip-on radials (not used)
Lamdahalbe 6m mini-mast.
Screw-in sun umbrella support (not used).
SotaBeams linked dipole.
Aerial-51 404-UL OCF dipole antenna (not used).
4000maH LiHV battery (not used).
4 Ah LifePO4 Eremit battery.
Painter’s thick plastic sheet and gardener’s kneeling pad.
Lightweight headphones.
Smartphone to spot and back-channel comms.
Logs:
Berndorfer Buchet
HEMA DL/HBY-064
SOTA DL/AM-180
Contacts Map:
Conclusions:
Weather conditions in Ireland meant that John VK6NU never got properly on the air before having to head back down ahead of the storm front.
Band conditions were variable on 20m and 40m was almost unusable because of contests that were going on, leaving hardly any free frequencies to operate on.
The equipment all worked as it should. The trolley helped with getting the heavy rucksack along the tracks however did have some problems as I went “Bush-hacking” up the final 25 vertical metres of ascent through grass, thistles and fallen twigs on a layer of old leaves. It performed wonderfully, however, as the base support for the antenna once I got to the summit. So “the jury is out” as to whether using the trolley is better than carrying the rucksack on my back. It may be better for some summits than others. It would be easier to pull if the handle was a little higher, so maybe some modifications will happen to the trolley over the next few activations.
For my holiday trip with my wife and dog, I chose the Salzburgerland region of Salzkammergut which is new to the Austrian HEMA scheme. At the same time, I would activate POTA and SOTA as well, if all went well. The trip was to be just 4 days long with half a day needed on Monday and Thursday purely from travelling to and from the village of Faistenau where we were to stay.
There still needed to be a balance between activations and time with the family and the weather needed to also be good for everything to work out.
This is an area where I have not been before, so I didn’t know what to expect except from the travel websites. I am glad to report that from a region to visit, the area fulfilled all expectations and the “Pension” that I chose turned out to be a great choice and I’d like to get this “plug” in for Pension Bayrhammer (Hinterseestrasse 55, 5324 Faistenau ). The host was fantastic and having our dog, he gave us a studio apartment at the back of the building that directly opened onto the rear garden and was separate from the rest of the hotel with its own parking spot. The price (including breakfast) was very reasonable and I would recommend this “Pension” (Bed & Breakfast in English) to anyone looking to spend a holiday in the “Salzkammergut” region.
Before leaving on the trip, I had done a couple of activations to make sure all of the radio equipment was fine and as well as the two rucksacks (one with the Xiegu G90 and antennas, masts and screw-in base), the small rucksack (with the Xiegu G106 and “throw in the trees antennas”) I also packed my three-magnet car roof antenna base to use with the HF-PRO2 loaded vertical which I have in the large rucksack as my back-up antenna. This was because, for the two planned POTA activations, I intended to work from the car.
Hopefully from all the equipment taken, I should be able to get on the air somehow!
Now all we needed was some dry sunny weather …
The Activations
Monday 12th June.
Firstly a SOTA summit on the way down – OE/SB-268 Gaisberg.
This summit is on the outskirts of Salzburg and looks down over the city. There is a good reason why this summit is the most activated SOTA summit in Austria. It is the definition of a drive-up summit with a car park and two restaurants on the top and large areas of open ground to set up on.
I took my large rucksack and headed up to the top where I found a convenient information stand to strap one of my 6-metre fibreglass telescopic poles onto and a bench seat to sit on. It only took a few minutes to get the Linked Dipole antenna up and after spotting, the first call in the log was Phil G4OBK from North Yorkshire followed by EA4BOC in Spain. Then followed some more UK and Spanish stations totalling 8 contacts in the log. 20 metres was starting to be difficult with deep QSB, so, as I didn’t want to keep the other members of the party waiting, I called it a day and packed up to head to the restaurant which was open for our lunch before continuing the journey.
The weather was not too hot but sunny and a very nice start to our holiday.
After unpacking at the digs and doing some supermarket shopping we looked to see where we would eat in the evening. In this area, when not in high season, it is often the case that restaurants are only open for the weekend plus Friday, so being closed Monday, and Tuesday is normal with some restaurants also closed on Wednesdays! We found one restaurant in the area overlooking a lake to the west of the village open and getting there was the start of our experience with roads in the Salzkammergut region. It seems that single-track roads with pull-off points are almost normal here and to have a road where you can pass oncoming traffic without having to drive off the road is a luxury. At least we didn’t meet any buses or large trucks on our several journeys down these small roads! The restaurant “Seewirt Strubklamm” was wonderful.
Tuesday 13th. June
This was planned as a POTA day with the ability to also see some of the beautiful countryside and lakes. These POTA parks were both first-time activations and were OE-0082 Fuschlsee Nature Reserve and OE-0055 Schafberg-Salzkammergetseen Nature Reserve.
POTA OE-0082 is a small park on the western shore of Lake Fuschl but the car park is within the park boundaries and there are tracks leading off from it. So while my wife and our dog could go for a casual walk in the park, I set up the radio gear on the front passenger seat and the loaded whip on the 3 x mag-mount on the roof, spotted myself on POTA and hoped for some calls. This was too late for any DX but 20m was quite busy and as well as POTA chasers I also had some others simply calling for a chat which is nice but as in POTA you need a minimum of 10 contacts and the family would return at some point, I pushed on and finished with 17 contacts in the log.
The location I had picked for the next park POTAOE-0055 was near a lay-by where there is an actual “Fish & Chips” stall (actually that lay-by is already in the boundaries of the park). We needed to go past it on the way to a larger parking area that I had picked for the next POTA activation spot. As we came up to it, it was obviously closed. We hoped it was simply too early and it would open after I had finished the next POTA activation, so we went onwards to the large parking area, this time we left our dog in the back of the car and my wife went and sat on a nearby bank to read in the sunshine and I set up the radio again (this time on the back seat so that I could calm the dog if needed (it wasn’t she happily snoozed in her area at the back of the car)).
I had left the mag-mount on the car roof, so the set-up did not take long. Getting contacts however was more difficult but eventually, I managed to get 13 contacts in the log. This was 13 contacts from around Europe on the 13th of June and our room number back at the hotel was 13 – so it’s a good job I am not superstitious!
Both of these parks had not been activated before.They were first time activations.
So having finished the Schafberg-Salzkammergutseen POTA activation, it was time to head back to the Fish & Chips stall near Winkl with the hope that it might have opened. It hadn’t and when we parked and went to see why not (nothing is indicated on the web) it turns out that it only opens on the weekend and on public holidays. A real disappointment, which in the hope to save others the disappointment, I have now added the opening times on Google Maps. As we were then stuck trying to find somewhere for lunch, I turned to Google Maps and found a restaurant not too far away on Mondsee Lake that was open. We had luck again, the “Gasthof See” just over the border in Upper Austria turned out to be a wonderful location with good food and very attentive service – another recommendation if you are in the area.
On returning to our hotel, I decided to take a look at access to the local HEMA summit OE/HSB-152 Kugelberg and also check out a restaurant for Wednesday evening (which was also closed Monday and Tuesday). The result of this was that the quick access route to Kugelberg that I thought I had found on the map turned out to be a private road and parking on the (single track) “main” road to walk to the “TrimPfad” (exercise area) on Kugelberg would not be possible as the car would block the road. On taking a look at the restaurant (the “Bramsaubraü”) however, it had a path to Kugelberg from its Biergarten. Looking at this on the map it would take longer than the earlier planned route but should be possible with the added advantage that my wife and dog could join me for part of the way, which they wanted to do. So a change to the plans was made and ….
Wednesday 14th June
Wednesday saw a mid-morning start to try to ascend Kugelberg (HEMA OE/HSP-152). I had set my plan to get to a point on the map where the track was inside the activation zone.
Once out of the gardens of the restaurant, there was a short climb but then a nice flat track, which, in the morning sunshine was a pleasant walk. We had agreed that my wife and our dog would only go as far as when the steeper track went off up the mountain about 50 metres after the “Trim-pfad” which is what we did. I bid them goodbye and they returned to the car, parked in the restaurant car park and I started off up the steep track tracing on my map as I went. When I got to the point where the map showed the track as finishing, it didn’t as a narrower track continued on as did I. Choosing narrow tracks as long as they went higher eventually I reached the summit where I found a marker stone. I presume this is the equivalent of the German trig-stone or UK trig-point indication used for mapping.
Space was very limited and this was close to a lot of trees. My usual choice would have been the Linked-Dipole antenna however there was no way that I could have fit it in, so my only choice was my backup – the Kommunica Power HF-PRO2 on my small tripod with 8 x 3 metre long radial wires. I was not hopeful of many contacts as using a vertical in among close trees is a bad idea as the trees absorb the radiated RF and to add to my problems I had no Internet coverage on the summit but luckily Mike 2E0YYY in England, who was out on a SOTA summit had sent me his frequency while I was still getting cell tower signals, so I set up and tuned to his frequency and there he was with Dom 2E0KIO (both were operating as 2R0 as they had special callsigns celebrating King Charles’ coronation). I called and there were my first two contacts in the log. For HEMA and SOTA 4 contacts are needed to “qualify” a summit. After moving off to a free frequency, it then took me another 15 minutes to attract another call on 40m and this was a hard contact to make into Switzerland with my report being 3-4. I decided to move up to 20m and I was very glad to find things a lot easier there where I managed 4 contacts in 12 minutes, a lot better than I had been doing on 40m. The key point was I had 7 contacts in the log.
This activation was difficult without reliable Internet coverage but there was also another problem the power lead broke as I was setting up, luckily this is one thing that I carry a spare for and I was glad I did in this case.
I had given my wife an approximate time when I would head back down the mountain and I was already 10 minutes late on this plan so I closed down and packed everything back into the rucksack and headed back down the steep tracks. As I turned onto the flat section, there was my wife and dog coming to greet me and escort me back to the car.
My wife had been very supportive during this holiday but I wanted her to do something she wanted to do in the area while we were in it, so that afternoon we headed to Lake Mond for lunch and for her to take a boat tour of the lake while I looked after our dog by walking her in the parks in Mondsee town.
Wednesday evening we went back to the Bramsaubraü restaurant where we had parked the car in the morning and the views, meal and service were “top-notch”.
This was our last night in Faistenau. the next morning we would be checking out and heading home, but not without another summit activation on the way.
Thursday 15th June
The trip home…
After packing our trip took us to another new HEMA Summit OE/HSB-156 Plainberg (Pronounced “Plenberg”) which is another summit above Salzberg looking down onto the city. This one although mostly a “Drive-Up” with the beautiful Maria Plain church and an up-market restaurant near the car park, there is a bit of a walk to get to the summit.
After we went to see the church and its grounds, bought and sent a postcard (have you realised how difficult it is to find postcards these days?), we went back to the car park where at one end the track to the summit starts. Again my wife and the dog chose to accompany me and this time we all got to the summit – at least I believe it was the summit as the ground dropped off around it in all directions but I could not find any marker stone this time. It would certainly be in the activation zone where I set up in any case and this time, there was enough room to put up the Linked Dipole antenna but again, despite being close to a large city, the cellphone coverage was patchy.
I decided to start on 20m as Mike (2R0YYY) was again out, this time on a HEMA Summit – G/HSP-020 Mow Cop, so we completed the first-ever HEMA-to-HEMA summit contact from England to Austria. The following nine contacts were with stations from the UK, Spain, Italy, Denmark, Germany and Ukraine.
So that was the conclusion to the radio activation week and how better to finish it off than with lunch at the restaurant on Palinberg, before tackling the drive home. We were very lucky with the traffic both when travelling to and returning from Austria – more that can be said for drivers going in the opposite direction where we saw various “Stau”s, “Traffic Jam”s or “Gridlock”s however you want to call them. Indeed on our return journey, we got a message over the SatNav that the autobahn we were travelling on had had to be totally closed in the other direction.
The trip had been a great success and there are lots and lots more HEMA summits in Austria’s Salzbergland just waiting to be explored!
When the weather plays along, it is possible to combine radio activations with a holiday in a new area with the family.
All the radio equipment worked well, the only problems (especially on the less well-known schemes like POTA and HEMA) came when my phone had no, or patchy Internet connectivity.
The main radio rucksack can become a heavy load, especially on the steeper tracks. I will look into some kind of trolley for summits where such an option is usable.
In preparation for my trip to the new Salzburgerland region in Austrian HEMA, I wanted to check that all the equipment that I would be taking (space limited by other people and a dog in the car) were working so I decided on an activation of a combined HEMA and SOTA summit (this is actually also a World castles award and COTA location as the summit has some castle ruins on the top of it).
Recently the long path to VK has been opening around 0630 – 0700 UTC so I would need to start early to drive down into Southern Allgau and to the parking spot at the restaurant before the steep walk up to the summit and then set up and try for a contact with Ernie VK3DET who had kindly offered to listen out for me. Mike 2E0YYY (or 2R0YYY for May and June) was also heading out to a SOTA summit to be there from 0630 UTC. So my alarm was set for 05:30 am local time to make this all happen and I put the fully packed rucksack ready to be picked up after having my breakfast on the following day (Wednesday).
For a change, the weather forecast was for a warm sunny day.
The Activation
Eisenberg – HEMA DL/HBY-036 and SOTA DL/AL-171.
The drive down I know very well but there have been some changes in the last year with one village having been bypassed completely using a tunnel and some very recently opened road sections. There were also diversions for some other closed roads in the area but nothing that affected my route luckily.
I arrived at the car park and was the second car in the (small) car park, so someone was up and about earlier than me! Most likely a local who was taking in the morning air. Also active when I arrived were about 20 cows, who came right up to the fence to the car park to see what was happening.
After “donning” the rucksack and rather than putting my waterproof jacket on, I strapped it to the outside of the rucksack as it was already turning into a warm day, I started the walk up the gravel track and it wasn’t long before I was stopping to catch my breath. I think “Rucksack bloat” has occurred with more things being added to it “just in case”. The result is a 12-kilogram rucksack which should really be about three kilos lighter!
Once I got to the castle ruins, I headed out to my usual spot on the wooden platform at the far end of the ruins, which is closest to the actual summit. It has not weathered the storms this last winter very well and several of the boards had broken or come loose from the metal frame below it. This will need to be repaired soon if someone is not going to break their ankle in a hole or worse still, fall right through as the wood gives up completely.
For my usage on this day, it would suffice in any case. I spread my painter’s sheet on the ground, strapped the 6m mast to a post on the side of the platform and put up the linked dipole with the link disconnected to enable 20-metre usage.
I was expecting some visiting members of the public as the weather was so nice, so I also got out some brochures on amateur radio to give them but the few people who did come by simply ignored me and carried on, on their way.
I spotted myself first on HEMA and called CQ a few times and first in the log was Don G0RQL from Devon in England. Soon after that, I saw that Mike 2R0YYY was spotted as out with another amateur – Dom 2E0KIO so I worked both of them on the “Gun” SOTA summit and then tried for my planned sked with Ernie VK3DET. Sure enough, there he was but only at a strength S4 signal where he will often be S8 or S9 when I am out portable. In any case with 54/44 reports in the log, it’s a contact that would not have happened from home as, even though I am in the countryside at home, the local noise level is often up to S4 or 5. Looking at all the other contacts that I got, it’s fairly clear that the skip was running short and while this is good for inter-Europe contacts, it’s not good for DX. In fact, I did not hear any other VKs on the band at all.
When I finished up with Ernie I put out several more CQ calls and spotted myself again and got a call from a station who was actually mobile in his car running just 40 watts to a mobile whip. Dave G0ODH/M was driving in North Staffordshire (UK) and putting a good S8 signal down to where I was close to the German / Austrian border.
That was 5 contacts in the log and enough to Qualify the HEMA summit DL/HBY-036, so now I spotted myself on SOTA and started calling CQ SOTA. As always there are a lot more SOTA than HEMA chasers and I soon got to better than one contact per minute, even with my “chatty style”. After “draining” the 20-metre callers, I switched the antenna and radio to 40-metres for a lot more chasers. When this flood calmed down, I looked at my watch to see it was just coming up to 10 am local time and the restaurant where I had parked my car would just be opening up, so it was time to pack up, head back down and then pop into the restaurant garden for a leisurely Weissbier before setting off home. The ideal way to end a successful activation.
Below is a map of all of my contacts.
Photos:
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Equipment used:
Mountaintop travelling 40-litre rucksack.
Xiegu G90.
Komunica Power HF-Pro2-PLUS-T loaded vertical antenna. (not used)
Modified mini photo tripod with clip-on radials (not used)
Lamdahalbe 6m mini-mast.
SotaBeams linked dipole.
Aerial-51 404-UL OCF dipole antenna (not used).
4000maH LiHV battery (not used).
4 Ah LifePO4 Eremit battery.
Painter’s thick plastic sheet and gardener’s kneeling pad.
Lightweight headphones.
Smartphone to spot and back-channel comms.
Logs:
Eisenberg
HEMA DL/HBY-036
SOTA DL/AL-171
Conclusions:
Band conditions at the time of this activation were short skip not as good as they have been.
Most importantly however, the radio / mast / antenna combination worked without any problems and hence is ready for the run of activations in Austria next week – the question is, dare I remove the backup antennas from the rucksack to reduce the weight?
As the weather here, at last, has changed from being cold and wet, to being sunny and dry and “not cold”, I decided to test the radio pack out before my planned trip to Austria in a few weeks’ time.
Rösenau Kreuz is my closest “HEMA only” summit. The high point on the small plateau does not have its own summit name (Schwalbenstein is not far away but is lower than this actual summit), so it is named after the very small metal cross on a concrete base by the track in the forest on the actual summit.
As I wanted to try for a contact with Ernie VK3DET in Australia and the Long path window appears to be getting earlier, this would be an early start so the alarm was set for 6 am and the larger rucksack put ready with the ground stake on Monday.
Rösenau Kreuz, there is a short but steep walk up a forest track to get to the summit plateau, so the weight – probably about 16 kilos of larger rucksack should be OK. In the rucksack are two 6m masts, the G90 radio, its LifePO4 and LiHV batteries, the linked-dipole, the off-centre-fed dipole and “just in case” the Komunica Power HF-Pro antenna and its tripod and radial wires. Oh and of course also, my pack-up and water bottle.
The band conditions on 20m haven’t been great for a while, so I planned to operate on 20m and 40m to make sure I get the minimum 4 contacts to qualify the summit.
Röseau Kreuz – HEMA DL/HBY-040.
Tuesday morning was dry and the sun was out but it was still quite cold at 7 am when I left home.
The drive down was uneventful and I was parked at my usual spot by the cross for St Ursula facing the walk up the track to the summit. Once unpacked I started on the trail, which passes two further religious wooden crosses.
On arrival at the spot which I found the last time I was up here (basically, turn sharp right at the Rösenau Kreuz and head through the forest and out onto the grassed area), I was surprised to find I was waist-high in the grass, given that most farmers in the area have already cut all their fodder and stored it away, this farmer seems to be a bit behind schedule, so I was hoping he didn’t decide this morning would be a good opportunity to mow the top paddock!
At least it was not waterlogged as it has been in the past.
Setting up the mast (N-S to give the best E-W radiation for long- or short-path to Australia) and the radio gear on my painter’s plastic sheet went without a problem and I sent Ernie a message via Signal. A few minutes later I could hear Ernie’s voice. Not as strong as usual but workable and he managed to pull me out of the noise at his end as well, so that was the first contact in the log. Later when Ernie was working Dave G4AKB/PM in Blackpool, he was 1 or 2 S-points stronger, so I think I may have been out a little too early.
Despite spotting myself on the HEMA cluster and Ernie and Mike spotting me on the DX Cluster and on the HEMA Facebook group, It took ages to get any callers. There was of course the usual spaltter from stations 1,2 or 3 kHz off frequency who simply ignore any low-power stations calling nearby. I think I may have someone deliberately jamming me, based on my spots on the HEMA website as a repeated on-off carrier appeared each time on my frequency as soon as I spotted on HEMA.
As well as the nice contact with Ernie, I also was called by Don G0RQL on 20m and worked one Czech Republic station and two Austrian stations on 40m. Interestingly the two Austrian stations were not far away from where I am going on holiday.
In all a good activation but a little disappointing with the number of chasers but HEMA is not nearly as large as SOTA is and I suspect most were still in bed! We’ll see if an afternoon activation is more to their liking on Thursday.
Photos:
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Equipment used:
Mountaintop travelling 40-litre rucksack.
Xiegu G90.
Komunica Power HF-Pro2-PLUS-T loaded vertical antenna. (not used)
Modified mini photo tripod with clip-on radials (not used)
Diamond RHM8B loaded vertical and tripod (not used)
Aerial-59 404-UL 40m OCF dipole. (not used)
Lamdahalbe 6m mini-mast (x2 – one spare).
Screw-in sun umbrella support.
SotaBeams linked dipole.
4000maH LiHV battery (not used).
4 Ah LifePO4 Eremit battery.
Painter’s thick plastic sheet.
Lightweight headphones.
Smartphone to spot and back-channel comms.
Log:
Rösenau Kreuz
HEMA DL/HBY-040
Conclusions:
Band conditions at the time of this activation were not brilliant and I was a little early for the Long path to Australia but it’s always good to get through to Ernie in Victoria. Attracting chasers for a HEMA summit is a difficult task.
The combination of the Xiegu G90 with its 20 watts and the linked dipole even with the small (effectively 5m high) pole continues to work very well. The radio did sound a little quiet when I first turned it on, so I may need to do a factory reset of its settings before the next activation.
DD5LP / G8GLM / VK2JI blog 
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