Category Archives: ILLW

DD5LP/P – August 17th 2024 ILLW DE0138 Westmole & DE00140 Mangturm Lighthouses.

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Preparation:

This was the activation that I had been preparing for over the previous few weeks. Once a year the International Lighthouse and Lightship Weekend has lighthouses and lightships around the world tied to amateur radio stations which are located near them with the purpose of informing the public about the lighthouse(s) and about amateur radio. The event runs for 48 hours but the length of activation is completely left up to the amateur, group of amateurs or club making the activation. Full details about ILLW can be found at illw.net

The only German lighthouses within sensible driving range are in Lindau on Lake Constance but for that drive, there are two lights, the southernmost in Germany – Westmole DE0138 and the oldest in Germany Mangturm DE0140. Unfortunately, it is not possible to operate from inside of either of the lighthouses however there is an area available at Lindau to set up in a public park (Römerschanze) in sight of both lighthouses. This is fairly small and has very little topsoil, so antenna options are limited, hence the shopping trolley supported, 6-metre telescopic mast and dipole solution I chose.

My experience in previous years has been that just running the 20 watts from the G90 with a dipole was not a strong enough signal to avoid being “stomped on” by other home station “crocodiles” (big mouth, little ears) so I built my “G106 Stack” with around 70-80w PEP output (at least on 20 & 40m). Given the limited space, I chose an OCF dipole, the aerial-51 404-UL off-centre-fed dipole which gives me multiple HF bands.

The week running up to this event, the terrestrial weather was not looking inviting. We had been having a heatwave but the weekend was promising rain and thunderstorms. On Friday however, the forecast said there should be a window of opportunity of a few hours of dry weather on Saturday afternoon so the gear was packed and ready to head off around midday to Lindau (about a 90-minute drive down the autobahn from where I live).

The Activation

The drive down was fine until entering Lindau where there is still traffic chaos which there has been for years. This is in the part of the town that is on the mainland, not on the island with its narrow streets, where congestion is normal. There has been a push to restrict cars driving onto the Island over the last 2 years with the one large open-air car park being closed and the land being redeveloped for expensive upper-market housing. The multi-story car park on the island is nowhere near large enough to cater for the extra load and is always full. So most visitors are forced to park on the mainland and walk across the bridge onto the island (where the two lighthouses and the tourist highlights are). In my case with the amount of equipment I have to take for the activation, I have found a hidden away car park behind the railway station – with most of its parking slots marked as reserved for the tour ship workers, so slots are limited but both last year and this year I was able to find a slot. This is a parking area where you need to use an App to pay for your time parked but that has the advantage that as the time there runs out you are warned and can extend to time without having to return to your car. with the uncertainty of the weather, this parking area has the added advantage that you can view both lighthouses from there, so if the weather was so bad that I could not go to the park, I could also operate from the car but most likely with less public interaction – which is the main point of the event.

Luckily as I arrived at the parking spot, the weather was OK and while I packed a waterproof jacket into the top of my shipping trolley, thankfully I was not going to need it.

On arriving at Römerschanze Park, I was glad to see that while people were standing around the side of the park taking in the views, no one was present on the grassy area, and it looked like two new drain inspection covers had been installed, so these would make a fine base for the trolley supported mast and antenna. Once I had unloaded the contents of the trolley, I proceeded to install the antenna. at this point – while the antenna was still on the ground a group came across and one person got tabled in the wire. I shouted to be careful that he did not fall and not only did he apologise, he also put the wire back where I had laid it out, ready for when I raised the mast. After raising the mast and pegging out the antenna elements, I tried to hang the bright orange wire winder on the wire so that no one would run into it. I should have used the electrical tape that I had forgotten I had with me to keep the winder in the air as just tying it on, did not work and over time it slid down to the ground peg. 

At this point, a young girl (perhaps 10 years old) came over and (watched by her father) asked me what I was doing and I explained to her about amateur radio and about lighthouse preservation before giving her some brochures and QSL cards. I believe she was interested especially as I said “without the Internet or your smartphone” – perhaps a seed for the future was laid there. I then connected up the radio, ready to start operations when a younger (perhaps 7-year-old) girl came across (afterwards, I wondered if this was the first girl’s sister), she was also very üpolite and interested and also received the brochures and cards.   

Now it was time to get some calls into the log, So I found a free frequency on 20m, put a spot on the DX Cluster with my two lighthouse references and called CQ. I did this for probably 15 minutes without a reply, so I tried 40 metres, also without success. Everything seemed to be working so why no calls. I decided to tune around and I found Alex DL1KAS calling CQ with a strong signal on 40m. I called him and he came back to me. So I was getting out fine. Alex did say he thought he could hear siome RF Ingres on my microphone audio, so we did some tests and found that removing the speech processor from the “radio stack” and putting it as far as possible away from the amplifier, things were a lot better, so that is how I operated for the rest of my time in the park.

As you can see from the log, I did not manage that many contacts. radio conditions were OK, with 15m perhaps being the best band at the time but also the one where I was only getting about 30w PEP output, not the 70 or 80w that I was seeing on 20 & 40m. Between the logged contacts I also spotted and called CQ many times but never got even one call back. This is strange. I was definitely being heard from Ireland to Spain to France. It’s hard to believe that all of the frequencies that I chose to call CQ on were actually in use by a station that I could not hear (and they could not hear me). This remains a mystery.

What is not a mystery is that it was the correct decision to activate again these two lighthouses in Lindau as part of ILLW as I had inquiries from two possible new hams (who knows) and I completed my activation before the rain arrived and before the G3 level solar storm also hit.

When I woke on Sunday, there was constant rain that started around 2 am and went through until noon. Even if I had gone down on Sunday afternoon, the park would have been totally waterlogged and unusable.    

Photos:

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Equipment taken:

  • Backup system (not used – left in the car) Mountaintop travelling 40-litre rucksack with Xiegu G90 radio, batteries, 6m mast, screw-in base, linked dipole antenna, HF-PRO2 antenna and photo tripod.
  • Three-magnet antenna base for car roof (not used).
  • “G-106 Stack” G106 radio, RMItaly amplifier, switch LPF box and ATU-100.
  • Shopping trolley.
  • Lamdahalbe 6m mini-mast.
  • Aerial-51 UL-404 OCF dipole.
  • 8 Ah LifePO4 battery (plus 4 & 2Ah backups – not used).
  • Painter’s thick plastic sheet.
  • Lightweight headphones.
  • Smartphone for SOTA spotting.

Log:

12:05  DL1KAS    7.165MHz SSB    5-9  5-9  (Axel reported hearing RF Ingres in my audio)
12:15  EA5JZ    21.258MHz SSB    5-9  5-9
12:49  EI0CAR   14.265MHz SSB    5-9  5-5   LH-2-LH Will at IE0016
13:05  CT2JBD/P 21.272MHz SSB    5-4  5-5   LH-2-LH PT-0005
13:10  TM22LH   14.294MHz SSB    5-3  5-6   LH-2-LH Hartwig DL7BC operating from FR-0027

Conclusions:

  • The shopping trolley antenna support worked well and given the weather conditions, I did not need to put up the shade tent.

  • Band conditions seemed best on 15m. A band that when I checked later, I was only putting out about 30w PEP not the 70-80 that I had on 20 & 40m.

  • I will need to do further work on the Speech processor relocating it and perhaps adding some ferrites to the audio cables.

  • I did hear some RF-VOX relay chatter a couple of times, so it seems the dry solder joint that I thought was the cause of the problem following the activation on Weichberg, wasn’t and this time I will look at putting a large-value capacitor straight across the relay coil to hopefully reduce this chattering.

73 ’til the next Summit / Lighthouse / Park or whatever.

DD5LP/P – August 19th 2023 – ILLW DE-038 Westmole & DE-0140 Mangturm in Lindau.

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Preparation:

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.

73 ’til the next activation!