With progress made on the 2-element wire beam and success at Peissenberg a week previously in the 10m only form, it was time to test the antenna this time with the trapped elements which should make the antenna a dual band antenna able to operate on the 10-metre and the 20-metre bands. This was not to be a test of the Bluetooth relay switching board but rather purely to test out the dual-band nature of the elements. Testing the full system with remote switchable direction will need to wait until another day.
After some days of rain showers, Monday had a good forecast with winds supposed to cease by 9 am and then the day to be sunny if not warm.
After a couple of tests in the muddy local field, the simple feed-point plate with the trapped elements had been trimmed to length, so everything was set for a test from a summit and so the surveyor’s tripod, the 7-metre mast, the antenna analyser and the antenna components were all loaded in the car on Sunday evening along with my 40-litre rucksack containing radio, battery and several antennas and masts, ready for an early start on Monday morning.
The chosen summit “Rentschen” is a plateau and as such a good summit for antenna testing with lots of space and few obstructions. This is a summit that is both in the HEMA and SOTA schemes and so is a “twofer” as POTA activators would say.
The Activation
The trip down was uneventful and I arrived at my usual car parking spot at around 8:15 am local time with my plan to be on the air before 9 am to catch the 20m long path into VK (I had set up a sked with Ernie VK3DET) and then to try the antenna also on 10 metres.
I chose a spot not far from the trig-point stone and I unpacked the mast, tripod and antenna first. These went up well, in the same way as I had installed them on the local field for the earlier tests and trimming. The four wires go out at 90° to each other and because of the combined length of the element and its cord extender (also acting as the guy cords for the mast), form a 56° angle with the vertical mast (the mast is a 7 metre mast but with the top section removed so that the feedpoint board sits at 5 metres above ground level).
Before unpacking the radio, I attached the antenna analyser to make sure that all still seemed OK with the antenna – it did. Then the Xiegu G90, headphones, battery and log book were unpacked and laid on my painter’s thick plastic sheet on the ground.
After sending a short Internet message to Ernie and agreeing on a 20m frequency that was free at both ends, I called Ernie and there he was – armchair copy, solid signal! I had the antenna “aimed” long-path (West from me) for this contact. When I needed to move to 10m, it would need to point short-path (East from me) so, rather than going straight on to 10m (a bad decision as it turned out), I decided to work more chasers (HEMA & SOTA) on 20m first.
In the middle of the SOTA callers on 20m, Matt ZL4NVW from Otago on the South Island of New Zealand called in. This suggests that 20m would have still been good for contacts into VK for another hour or so at least.
Another surprise contact was Alan G7KMW actually mobile while heading into work in the midlands of the UK. An easy copy so I think the antenna is definitely working.
When I decided to switch to 10m it was getting close to 0900 UTC and after dropping the antenna, turning the feed-point board 180° so that the beam would be pointing short-path to VK and raising it again, Ernie VK2DET and I tried for a 10m contact but if I hadn’t known he was calling I would have mistaken it for just part of the noise. The signal was so weak that there was no chance of Ernie hearing me (but I did try). What was strange was that two VK2 stations VK2CPC and VK2GM were both booming great 59 signals on 10m. Initially, I had thought my antenna wasn’t working on 10m but later I found it was most likely a propagation problem with an X-ray flare hitting the Ionosphere over Australia and pushing the MUF down over VKs 3,5,6 & 8 but not affecting VK2.
I only got one contact on 10 metres and that was off the side of the beam with Mario in Munich.
The next test will be to fit the Bluetooth-switched top board, to see if I can hear any difference in signal strengths as I “rotate” the static antenna electrically. I also want to see if I can support the mast with just a ground peg rather than using the surveyor’s tripod. On Rentschen at the start of the activation, there were only very light winds but when I went QRT, they had increased to a level where I may have had issues putting the antenna up so I had timed it right in that respect.
Photos:
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Equipment taken:
Mountaintop travelling 40-litre rucksack.
Xiegu G90 radio.
Surveyor’s tripod.
7 metre fibreglass mast.
10/20-metre band 2-element trapped wire beam.
RigExpert AA-30 Antenna Analyser.
Komunica Power HF-Pro2-PLUS-T loaded vertical antenna and tripod (not used)
Lamdahalbe 5m mini-mast and new metal base peg (not used).
SotaBeams linked dipole (not used).
4 Ah Eremit LifePO4 battery.
4 Ah LiHV battery(not used).
Painter’s thick plastic sheet.
Gardener’s kneeling pad.
Lightweight headphones.
Smartphone for SOTA/HEMA spotting.
Log:
HEMA
SOTA
CONTACTS MAP
Conclusions:
The antenna worked well on 20 metres. The problem with getting through on 10 metres to VK3 was later found to be an X-ray flare hitting the atmosphere over part of Australia, explaining why VK2 and JAs were getting through but not VK3. Others in Europe experienced similar problems.
Once the band is open and DX stations are coming in, the “search & pounce” approach can be forgotten as there are too many high-powered stations with large beam antennas that believe it is their right to get in contact with the DX station and if they hear someone else calling ahead of them, they repeat their call after the portable station finishes to make sure that if the DX station goes back to the portable station, he/she can no longer hear the DX station because of the DQRM they are causing. Hardly in the spirit of ham radio!
A short 3-night break with the family to Füssen near the Austrian/German border brought the chance of some portable radio activations. The problem of planning ahead with this trip was the uncertainty of the weather and indeed two of the days were ruled out due to high winds or constant rain but a POTA activation and a combined HEMA/SOTA activation could take place. See previous reports to explain how a summit can be in both HEMA and SOTA. As my new wire beam has, because of long-term sub-zero temperatures and snow cover, not been able to be tuned as yet (and its supporting surveyor’s tripod could not be taken along due to lack of space in the car), the good old 6m telescopic fishing pole with a linked dipole would be the antenna of choice on any summits and the Komunica HF-Pro2-Plus-T on a mag mount on the car roof for the POTA activation which would be again a PLOTA (Parking Lot on the air) from a car park, just within the boundaries of the park.
The Activations
Monday 22nd January – POTA DA-0003 Ammergauer Alps NP.
This POTA park is quite large and the last time I activated this, it was a joint activation with the SOTA “Laber” summit which is in the East of the park. This time I would be activating from the western edge of the park.
After checking into our hotel and dropping off my wife at the Spa, our dog Bonnie and I drove to the parking area that I had found on the map to be within the park’s boundaries. Of course, before starting operating, a higher priority was to take the dog for a walk up into the forest on the side of the hill. Once this was taken care of I could set up the station in the car. The G90 radio and its battery were put on the front passenger seat and the antenna was located on the magnetic mount on the roof.
I had decided to start on 40 metres as normally this is a sure way to get a few contacts in the log and with POTA 10 contacts are needed to qualify the park. This was more difficult than expected with the spot on the POTA site not bringing the expected flood of calls. I tried a different frequency in case there was someone, that I could not hear on my chosen frequency and after a little while longer I managed four contacts but then the calls dried up. It was about noon and perhaps this is not a good time for 40 metres?
So after a switch to 20m and re-adjusting the antenna, we had a totally different story with lots of calls getting into the log. Indeed the final count was 23 contacts in 45 minutes, with a few of those being a little longer than the usual report exchange.
Tuesday 23rd January – HEMA/SOTA DL/HBY-036 Eisenberg / DL/AL-171 Eisenberg.
I had considered activating some summits closer to Füssen, that I had not activated before, however as most tracks were still snow-blocked and some others simply dangerous at this time of year, I decided to drive a little further and activate a summit that I know well and have activated several times over the last few years. Eisenberg has a publicly accessible castle ruins on its summit with a wooden platform added to one end, where I normally set up.
En route the rain that had started soon after I left the hotel stopped just as I was arriving at the starting point for the climb. The walk up from the (unfortunately closed) Schlossalm Zell restaurant needed me to fit my shoe spikes as the path was thick ice and as I got closer to the summit, the winds were increasing.
I was not worried as I knew I had a good strong point to strap the mast to and could shelter alongside the wall on the platform. On arriving at the platform, I was surprised to see a new fence across it as it seems half of the platform has rotted away and is awaiting repair. This messed up the idea of setting up on the platform so I searched around in the ruins in the hope of finding a large enough area to string out the antenna and at the same time have some shelter from the winds.
No such spot was to be found but I did find a sheltered spot with enough room to put up my backup antenna, the Komunica HF-PRO2-Plus-T on its tripod with radial wires. This was going to have to be the option and as I could see further clouds heading towards me, I wanted to make a fairly quick activation (for both HEMA and SOTA only 4 contacts are needed to qualify the summit)
Learning from the previous day’s experience I decided to start on 20 metres rather than 40 metres and given the incoming weather, this was going to be a single-band activation.
This activation racked up 17 contacts in 14 minutes (several of these regular chasers who I had not yet talked to in 2024) before I packed up and headed back to the car at which point the incoming rain started – I had been lucky with the weather.
At this point, an activation of Falkenstein (another summit with castle ruins on it), had been planned for either Wednesday or Thursday but very strong winds on Wednesday and constant rain on Thursday, meant that activation never took place.
Photos:
POTA DA-0003 Ammergauer Alps National Park
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HEMA DL/HBY-036 / SOTA DL/AL-171 Eisenberg
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Equipment taken:
MountainTop 40-litre rucksack.
Xiegu G90.
Komunica Power HF-Pro2-PLUS-T loaded vertical antenna. (used with magnetic mount for the first activation and on a tripod with radials for the second activation).
Three-magnet car roof antenna mount.
Modified mini photo tripod with clip-on radials
Lamdahalbe 6m mini-mast (not used).
SotaBeams linked dipole (not used).
4 Ah LifePO4 Eremit battery.
4.5 Ah LiHV battery.
Painter’s thick plastic sheet and gardener’s kneeling pad.
Lightweight headphones.
Smartphone to spot and back-channel comms.
Logs:
POTA DA-0003 Ammergauer Alpen NP
POTA Contacts Map
HEMA DL/HBY-036 Eisenberg
SOTA DL/AL-171 Eisenberg
SOTA Contacts map:
Conclusions:
The weather was a problem mainly on the second two days, stopping the hoped-for third activation.
The Xiegu G90 continues to work reliably.
Again the Komunica Power HF-PRO-2-Plus-T – again saved the day on the summit activation.
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.
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:
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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)
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.
After several cancelled (because of weather and unplanned commitments) tries, I was determined to get out to “a” summit again. Originally I wanted to test out the “wavelength-plus” on-the-ground antenna however following some positive comments from John VA3KOT on the VP2E antenna after I pointed him at it as an interesting antenna, I decided I probably should give it another try after building it nearly two years ago and only using it once or twice!
John VA3KOT, by the way, has a nice and friendly website that he calls Ham radio Outside the box, where he likes to look at unusual solutions used by hams to solve portable operations issues. The site is well worth a read and is where I found out about the wire-on-the-ground antenna while I was looking for a small lightweight antenna to use with my G106 radio while travelling.
I have built two VP2E antennas (actually three, but the third one was an attempt to make the antenna multi-band through the use of links – it failed). So I have a 40m and a 20m version at the moment. Both are twice the size of a normal dipole on the band and hence need space for any tests. For antenna testing, Rentschen is ideal as it is a drive-on summit with a plateau top. So I have lots of space to set up the antenna. I decided I would only test the 20m version as that is the band where some directional gain might prove the difference between making a DX contact and not doing so. It has to be said that, the possible 2 dBD gain in some directions compared to a dipole, is not a lot – but as we know, every little bit counts and the 20 watts of SSB from the G90 radio is hardly a “QRO” set-up, so “all help is gratefully received”.
To find out all about the “Vertically Polarised Two Element” VP2E antenna, a little of its history, how I built mine and my calculator for you to get the needed lengths for whichever band you choose, click here.
Ernie VK3DET had kindly said he would listen for me and Wx dependant, Mike 2E0YYY might get out to his local hill in the UK to give me an S2S contact.
As usual, all gear was packed in the car, the night before the activation, so that I could make an early start. That being said, this would not need to be a really early start as the 20m long path had been opening only from 0830 UTC (09:30 am local time) recently, so leaving home at 8:15 – 8:30 am would be fine.
The weather forecast was for a cool overcast day but, most importantly, no rain.
The Activation
Rentschen – HEMA DL/HAM-014 and SOTA DL/AM-176.
The good drive down in just over 40 minutes and I was parked on the summit by 9 am local time (0800 UTC). 25 minutes later I was all set up, with the VP2E “pointing” due West – my long path direction for contacts into VK. First in the log after a CQ call – Ernie VK3DET 5-4 in both directions.
Mike 2E0YYY had been unable to get out as they had constant rain all morning, so he kindly acted as my spotter and starting with the HEMA designation, I quickly put 18 contacts in the log. Many from the UK and many commenting on how loud and consistent a signal I had, while there was QSB on the band. In fact, surveying the contacts later I can tell that skip was short, which also explained why the band seemed full almost from end-to-end and this on a weekday! Ernie heard a couple of other European stations but none from Germany – perhaps we hit the best time with our contact or perhaps this antenna was achieving a good low-angle radiation pattern as the models show it should do. Some callers were weaker than I normally hear them, especially to the north and southeast – this could be the antenna’s directivity or simple conditions.
Once the callers dried up, I asked Mike to spot me again but this time on the SOTA cluster and the DX cluster and again I had a pile-up – another 18 contacts in the log. Of all the 36 contacts, Bernie was the only one from outside of Continental Europe. the majority of callers were from the UK, including one G0POQ from my town of birth – Hull in East Yorkshire. several of the contacts were conversations rather than only a report exchange, so the band conditions and the antenna were holding up well. After the second pile-up finished, I decided to pack up as it was only 3°C and the primary 4AH LifePO would have been somewhat drained after about a full hour of constant usage at 20 watts output. I did have a second battery with me (a LiHV 4 AH one) but I had achieved what I had come to do in testing the 20m VP2E and I am glad to say all worked well. None of the equipment had any issues on this outing.
Below as an extra in this report, I have the SOTAMapping 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.
Screw-in sun umbrella support (not used).
Converted Surveyors tripod.
SotaBeams linked dipole (not used).
Aerial-51 404-UL OCF dipole antenna (not used).
20 & 40m VP2E antennas (20m one 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:
Rentschen
HEMA DL/HAM-014
SOTA DL/AM-176
Conclusions:
Band conditions at the time of this activation were short skip not as good as they have been, which makes the contact into Australia (albeit an arranged, scheduled one) all the more of a success.
The equipment all worked as it should. The combination of the Xiegu G90 with its 20 watts of SSB and the VP2E (Vertically polarised 2-element) antenna on the 6m-high mast supported by the surveyor’s tripod worked very well from the first moment it was plugged into the radio. I now believe the antenna has “some” directivity however I suspect its greatest asset is the low-angle radiation and the amount of wire in the air, being twice as large as the dipoles that I normally use. The fact that it is purely a single-band antenna is a drawback as is the need to use the large tripod to support the mast.
As Andrew VK1AD was going out using the VI10SOTA special event call sign to celebrate 10 years of SOTA in the ACT, I decided to go out at the same time and try for an S2S and an H2S. If the long path band conditions were as they have been, it should be possible with a little luck.
Mike 2E0YYY/P and Ernie VK3DET would get on as well.
The set-up would be the tried and tested G90 plus OCF dipole from Aerial-51 and the 6m mast, all of which packs into, or onto my medium sized rucksack.
All was prepared and put in the back of the car for a 7:30 am start on Sunday morning.
I decided that I would go to my closest summit, Berndorfer Buchet, which is a HEMA summit as well as a SOTA summit and so I alerted in both award systems of my intention of activating it.
The Activation
Berndorfer Buchet – HEMA DL/HCN-004 and SOTA DL/AM-180.
The good drive down in just over 30 minutes and I was parked at my usual spot by 8:05 am. The walk from the parking spot to the summit takes 15 minutes and with another 15 minutes to set up the station, I was on the air by 07:40 UTC. I messaged Mike 2E0YYY who had just arrived in his local park and Ernie who was heading to his radio shack.
Tuning around 20m was already active with me but dead with Mike in the UK but as time went on this changed. I heard a JI1 (Japan) station but could not get a reply from him to me calls. I also heard and worked very easily EA5S/M in Spain, so I knew I was getting out. VI10SOTA was spotted on several different frequencies, Andrew was obviously having to move to get away from the normal weekend QRM. On some of his spotted frequencies I could hear the chasers calling him but not Andrew himself and that was to be the story of the activation. Although I eventually got an easy contact with Mike in The UK, I couldn’t manage one with Ernie. On a couple of occasions I could hear someone in the noise but I couldn’t say if it was Ernie or not. He of course could not hear anything from me.
As well as 20m, I also got lots of contacts around Europe on 40m. I tried 10 metres as well but it was the DARC 10m contest and so the band was full of loud, wide stations. Even if the band had opened for DX I would not have been able to get through the QRM from the contest stations.
One positive point from the outing, was that the new power lead which I made after the problems I had on the last activation, worked perfectly. Overall this activation in the cold (maximum +5°C) was a bit of a let down compared to “what could have been” but propagation is like that. I would have like to have worked Andrew on his summit in Australia and although some home stations in Europe managed it, it was not to be from where I was.
At least this time, i did not come home with a list of problems to fix, the equipment worked correctly for the whole 2 hours that I was on the summit.
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)
Lamdahalbe 6m mini-mast.
Screw-in sun umbrella support.
SotaBeams linked dipole (not used).
Aerial-51 404-UL OCF dipole antenna
4000maH LiHV battery (not used).
4 Ah LifePO4 Eremit battery.
Painters thick plastic sheet and gardeners kneeling pad.
Lightweight headphones.
Smartphone to spot and back-channel comms.
Logs:
Berndorfer Buchet
HEMA DL/HCN-004
SOTA DL/AM-180
Conclusions:
Band conditions at the time of this activation were not as good as I had hoped they would be and 10m was totally unusable with the local contest being in full swing.
The equipment all worked as it should. The combination of the Xiegu G90 with it’s 20 watts and the Aerial-51 OCF dipole even with the small (effectively 5m high) pole continues to work very well. This is definitely a good combination for single backpack portable operation.
DD5LP / G8GLM / VK2JI blog 
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