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.
As part of a family day out I wanted to do some radio and I have had this park on my list of “close-by” locations for some time and as my wife wished to visit a Museum just 20 minutes away, this all got planned together with two dog walks for our dog, Bonnie.
Checking the maps, I found that the “Wanderparkplatz” was in the park boundaries and while the other two parking areas in the park shown are off the road next to private businesses, this patch of muddy ground would have to do.
I would operate from the car, as I have done for all of my POTA activations so far and that means the G90 radio on the passenger seat and the Komunica HF-PRO-2 on the three-magnet roof mount.
The plan was to operate for between an hour and 90 minutes while fitting in the drive to and from the spot from the Museum and two dog walks.
This would be the very first activation of this park within the POTA award scheme although it is also in the WWFF scheme, where it has been activated before.
The Activation
POTA DA-0458 (WWFF DLFF-0441)
The walker’s parking spot is just a few hundred metres outside of the small town of Seeshaupt on the Southern end of Lake Starnberg. When I arrived there was no one there so I parked up next to the map of the area and took Boonie for her first walk, down into the forest, across the railway line and then over towards the lake. On our return, another car had joined us in the parking area and the couple with the car were getting ready to start the walk around the lake. It was dry and sunny but still cold, so everyone was wrapped up well.
Now it was time for some radio!
Bonnie was put back in her area at the back of the car and she settled down. The antenna was adjusted for 20 metres and then put on the roof and the radio was set up on the passenger’s seat. To start with there was very little on the band except for two very strong Spanish stations who I heard were returning calls from European stations even though they were calling CQ DX, so the band was obviously not open. I called the stations and with my little 20 watts and loaded whip antenna got them with no problem at all (obviously their antennas were pointed in my direction). Both were running 1 kW output.
I then chose a frequency, checked it was free and then spotted myself on the POTA website and it wasn’t long before I got a stream of calls coming in. There seems to be a lot of people in Europe willing to chase POTA stations but far, far fewer activators active than in the SOTA system for example. I know this is not the situation in the US, so it seems the POTA scheme is still finding its feet in Europe.
With 19 contacts in 29 minutes on 20m, I was happy but also surprised that despite this number of contacts, the majority were more than just signal report exchanges and all exchanged greetings for Christmas and New Year. Contacts were from all around Western Europe, from Italy and Spain in the south to Sweden and the Shetland Islands in the north.
When I decided to move over to forty meters, I only managed three contacts before giving up with all of the QRM but one of those was with a French amateur activating a 10-point SOTA summit in Germany. I think I was his last contact before he packed up to head back down the mountain.
Before heading back to pick my wife up from the museum Bonnie got her second dog walk of the day.
All in all, this was a nice use of a couple of hours, in the fresh air and it turned out to be another FIRST-TIME POTA activation for the park.
Photos:
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POTA DA-0458:
Equipment taken:
Xiegu G-90 radio.
Komunica Power HF-Pro2 loaded vertical antenna with a three-magnet car roof mount base.
4Ah Eremit LifePO4 battery.
2.5 Ah 3S LiPO battery.
Lightweight headphones.
Smartphone for spotting.
Log:
DA-0458 Osterseen Nature Reserve
Conclusions:
Once I finally got some POTA hunters calling me, it was fine although to start with I thought I would be hunting down the needed 10 contacts simply from stations on the 20m band.
Forty metres was an uneven battle – so many stations on and not enough space. I’m glad that I got so many contacts on 20m and didn’t need to rely on 40m.
Interestingly the majority of the contacts that I had were longer than the usual callsign and signal report exchanges and several stations waited until I had finished before trying to get through to me again. This was like the bands 10 years ago – a big improvement on more recent experiences. Perhaps there was still a little “Christmas Spirit” around?
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!
As I was travelling to the “Ham Radio” in Friedrichshafen, I looked around for a POTA park in the area to activate and found the ONLY one anywhere in the area was Riedlepark, right in the centre of the town. I was amazed that there are not any other POTA-certified parks in the area. Perhaps more will be added soon?
I would have very limited time available, so I Alerted about a week before to activate on Friday lunchtime as I had other commitments at the Ham radio show during the day I would have to go without lunch to be able to activate.
Looking at the official Baden Wurttemburg government mapping system, I could find the limits of the park and the car park by the children’s home is fully within the park boundaries, so I decided, given the limited time, that is where I would activate from. To avoid carrying a lot of equipment, I decided to just take the small QRP Xiegu G106 radio and my Komunica Power HF-PRO2 loaded vertical antenna.
For a SOTA activation with the number of chasers around Europe, this would be more than sufficient and even with a weak signal, I would be almost guaranteed the needed 4 SOTA contacts for any summit as long as I could put out a spot. For POTA, at least in Germany, the story is different. There are far fewer chasers and added to that 10 contacts are needed. I would need to work hard to get the points but I had hoped that with the density of radio amateurs around Friedrichshafen for the largest meeting of radio hams in Europe – I would be fine on ground wave. this was not the case and as you will read below, it was a hard battle to get the 10 contacts in the time I had available.
In any case, the small radio pack and antenna and mag mount were packed into the car along with the needed computer/recording set up and clothes needed for my short two-day trip and I left on Friday morning at 06:30 am local time.
The Activation
POTA DA-0156
After having a busy morning at the Hamfest, I broke away at around 12:15, headed back to the car and drove to the park. Well, at least that was the plan. It seems that the GPS didn’t know that some of the roads in the area are now one way and the result was another 15 minutes added to what should have been a 7-8 minute drive from the Messe where Ham Radio is held.
At least when I got to the site there was plenty of space, so I went and bought a parking permit from the machine which would allow me to stay until 13:33 at the very latest. That should be more than enough time – right? …
I thought my best chance would be on 40 metres but despite hearing and calling a few stations and spotting myself in the POTA app – I got no contacts. I was starting to think that perhaps 4-5 watts was simply not going to “cut it” with the vertical antenna.
Luckily I decided to switch to 20m and there I was able to call other stations and get contacts into the log. I did spot and call CQ for some time and I guess of the 10 needed contacts that I managed to squeeze in my available time, I think 3, perhaps 4 were actual POTO “chasers” two were SOTA activators and the remainder were all simply stations calling CQ on the 20m band.
I had to fight for most of the contacts and there was a big gap after the fifth contact when I thought I would not get any more contacts. As I hoped this would be another “First activation” of a park, I really need to get the full 10 contacts. Thankfully with about 4 minutes to go before my parking permit ran out, I closed off the tenth contact.
Then it was time to quickly pack up and head back to the show, where my teammates were just about start another round of interviews with dealers and associations.
Another FIRST POTA activation (despite some competition).
Photos:
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POTA DA-0156:
Equipment taken:
Xiegu G-106 radio.
Komunica Power HF-Pro2 loaded vertical antenna with a three-magnet car roof mount base.
2Ah Eremit LifePO4 battery.
2.5 Ah 3S LiPO battery.
Lightweight headphones.
Smartphone for spotting.
Log:
DA-0156 RiedlePark, Friedrichshafen
Conclusions:
I have been spoilt with years of SOTA activations. The infrastructure in place for SOTA to have chasers call you is simply not there or does not work as well for the newer schemes like HEMA and POTA.
If the reports I got back were true (which I believe they were), the little G106 and the HF-PRO2 are a combination that works well on 20m, but not so well on 40m. Despite that at the show I bought a Komunica Power HF-Explorer-Mini as a smaller loaded vertical to use with the G106 radio. We’ll see how well (or not) that smaller and lighter combination works over the summer.
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.
For this POTA (Parks on the air) activation, coordination was needed with an already planned trip that my wife was making to the area. It was agreed that I would drop her off and then drive another 45 minutes to arrive at this park, this time with our dog, Bonnie along for the ride and walks. (at the end in total, it was 5 separate walks that the dog got during the whole trip and loved the opportunity of being in so many different places).
There are no rules forbidding motorised transport or operating from a parked car, so for this activation, like the last one, I decided to do just that. I wouldn’t even put up the mast and linked dipole, rather I would use the Komunica HF-PRO2 on a three-magnet mount on the car roof and operate from within the car. The temperatures were expected to be just above freezing and indeed the first of this year’s snow arrived at the location the night before the activation.
This would be an early start and so all radio gear was loaded into the car, the Tuesday afternoon before the Wednesday activation.
The Activation
POTA DA-0277
After dropping my wife off, the road south was VERY curvey and took the best part of the 45 minutes that Google maps told me it would. Part of the way, I stopped and gave the dog another walk as she wasn’t so happy with the road conditions. Upon arriving at the location, the first task was again to take the dog on a 15-minute walk so that she could “take care of business” before I could start to set up the radio. After being put back into the back of the car she settled down and just listened to my attempts of making radio contacts.
Little did I know that this was not to be as easy an activation as I had expected!
I set up the Komunica HF-Pro antenna on the roof of the car using my 3-Magnet base as I had done on the previous activation, running the coax in through the rubber at the top of the rear door. The radio (the Xiegu G90) was set up on the passenger’s seat, propped up a little to make viewing the display easier but sun reflection was not going to be an issue this time.
After tuning around on 20m, I spotted myself and called CQ. After a while Ron, G0RQL came back to me and we had a short QSO. The whole radio seemed a little quiet though. To start with I put this down to the location being very quiet. In fact, soon after that, I lost power to the radio while moving it around on the seat. Previously this had been a bad connection in the inline fuse holder but as I was pressed for time – I only had a maximum of 90 minutes of operation time before I would have to return to collect my wife, I decided to change from the LifePO4 4AH battery using the Xiegu supplied power lead to my LiHV 4Ah battery which uses a lead that I made up. That worked and I was off again trying to find stations but I was getting no calls. At this point, I saw the SWR which was high. I had not seen it earlier as before losing power, the automatic tuner had been enabled and that ATU will literally match a wet piece of spaghetti to the radio! So I got out and checked that I had the coil set correctly on the antenna – it was correct according to my list. I checked the connectors but all looked OK and the SWR stayed high. I changed the antenna setting and the radio to 40 metres hoping that would bring me more contacts (in POTA ten contacts are needed and my time was running out quickly). Still no luck as the SWR was high on 40m as well.
It was time to change the antenna. Rather than put up the fibreglass mast and linked dipole, I decided to switch to my other HF-PRO2 antenna which I mount on a small tripod with radial wires. My streak of bad luck was still with me as the connecting wire on the tripod, where I normally clip the radials onto had gone AWOL. I managed to clip to bare metal which worked. This took more valuable time however it got the needed result. Once I was using that antenna, the SWR was normal and I started making contacts and attracting some deliberate QRM from some idiot dumping a carrier on the frequency I was on for minutes at a time. Time was running short and moving frequency and re-spotting as well as calling another POTA operator for a “Park-to-Park” contact got me to 11 contacts in the log and I was only 10 minutes over my planned departure time.
Of course, before setting off down that winding road again, it was best to take Bonnie, the dog, for a quick walk which I did after literally throwing the antennas, tripod, magnetic mount and cables onto the back seat of the car. I texted my wife to say I would be 15 minutes late but in fact, it was only 5 minutes as I was able to reduce that Google travel time by 10 minutes by applying a little heavier right foot on the way back.
Photos:
POTA DA-0277:
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Equipment taken:
Mountaintop travelling 40-litre rucksack.
Xiegu G90 radio & Xiegu G-106 radio (not used).
Komunica Power HF-Pro2 loaded vertical antenna with a three-magnet car roof mount base.
Komunica Power HF-Pro2-Plus-T loaded vertical antenna with a tripod and radial wires.
Lamdahalbe 6m mini-mast (not used).
SotaBeams linked dipole (not used).
4 Ah and (not used) 2Ah Eremit LifePO4 batteries.
4 Ah LiHV battery.
Painter’s thick plastic sheet (not used).
Gardener’s kneeling pad (not used).
Lightweight headphones (not used).
Smartphone for spotting.
Log:
DA-0277 Karwendel und Karwendelvorgebirge National Park
Conclusions:
Never expect an activation to go without problems. This time I was particularly unlucky with 3 different faults but taking alternatives along when you are car-based, only costs time rather than adding carry weight.
After checking both the magnetic mount and cable and power lead, I was unable to find any faults. In the case of the bad SWR, it is possible that the data, that I have from the non-telescopic HF-PRO2 is from when I calibrated it on the top of my previous car and hence I will need to recalibrate it. The power lead problem, I can only think is caused by the strange power connector that Xiegu use on the G90.
This was to be my first POTA (Parks on the air) activation. POTA is like WWFF (an award scheme in which I haven’t taken part) but was formed in the US as a follow-on from the ARRL National Parks on-the-air celebration. It has taken off in the US and now is spreading internationally. They have a good spotting and logging web infrastructure, which is essential nowadays. The award definitions are very varied and nothing like the other schemes that I take part in. A minimum of 10 contacts are required to qualify a park activation and the activation itself can take place anywhere within the park’s boundaries. For some POTA awards, the park can be activated more than once a year.
What attracts me is that this park is only a 30-40 minute drive away from my home (in fact it’s even closer but I picked a nice spot by a large lake to go to). There are no rules forbidding motorised transport or operating from a parked car, so for this first one, I decided to do just that. I wouldn’t even put up the mast and linked dipole, rather I would use the Komunica HF-PRO2 on a three-magnet mount on the car roof and operate from within the car. as it turned out with temps between 4 and 8 degrees centigrade, this was a wise plan!
I installed the appropriate POTA spotting App on my phone and checked it was working.
This activation would take place late morning, so that I could take the dog for her morning walk before leaving and get back just after lunchtime having spent about 90 minutes operating. Nothing needed to be loaded in the car until the morning of the trip with this later-than-usual start.
This was going to be a trial of this “luxury” set-up and my, chosen from maps, location to see if it was indeed accessible.
The Activation
POTA DA-0006
I decided to take the country road route rather than the autobahn as according to Google it would only take about 5 minutes longer. This was true however the number of small villages this took me through was a pain, so the return route would be via the Autobahn.
On arriving at my site, I took a walk around and made some photos before returning to the car, setup up the radio and antenna and tuning around to see what I could hear. I started on the 40-metre band which was full of stations from end to end (and this was a Friday, not a weekend). I found one portable station calling CQ, so I decided to give him a call to make sure I was getting out. No Issues – a short, 59 each-way contact with Luc, who was actually activating a WWFF park location.
I then saw another POTA activator on the spotting page and called Stuart M0OVG for my first “park-to-park” contact with 55 reports each way.
Now that I was happy that everything was working, I found a free frequency and spotted myself on the POTA website and got a couple of calls from Poland. At this point, I managed to contact Mike 2E0YYY who was still out in his local park (not POTA), so I moved to 20m to work him and to test out the new QRP radio – a Xiegu G-106 which I had along as well as the Xiegu G90. Tests were performed and while the little G106 with my external RF-Clipper speech processor was workable it was down a couple of S-Points on the more powerful G90 radio, which was running 20 watts of the speech-compressed signal. I still have the feeling that the G-106 is not as loud as it should be however in these tests the 20m band was up and down with QSB and so a really accurate test was not possible.
When I finished with Mike, I re-spotted myself on the POTA website on 20m and the calls started. I ended up with 20 contacts in 45 minutes. A lower rate than when I do a SOTA activation but not bad for a scheme that is still new in Europe. I finished off back on 40m to get another Park-to-Park contact with Dave G8XDD/P who was in two different parks at the same time, in the UK.
All in all, I think this went very well for my first POTA activation. Although the site was fine, I may try a different location the next time that I activate this park, given that there are locations all over the 1100 square kilometre park to choose from!
Photos:
POTA DA-0006:
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Equipment taken:
Mountaintop travelling 40-litre rucksack.
Xiegu G90 radio & Xiegu G-106 radio.
Komunica Power HF-Pro2 loaded vertical antenna with a three-magnet car roof mount base.
Lamdahalbe 6m mini-mast (not used).
SotaBeams linked dipole (not used).
4 Ah and 2Ah Eremit LifePO4 batteries.
4 Ah LiHV battery (not used).
Painter’s thick plastic sheet (not used).
Gardener’s kneeling pad (not used).
Lightweight headphones (not used).
Smartphone for spotting.
Log:
DA-0006 Augsburg Westlische Wälde Naturpark
Conclusions:
For a first activation, this went well but I think (unless the weather stops it), I’d prefer to operate away from the car in the future.
I’m still not convinced that the G-106 radio is performing as I expect it to. It’s good that the added speech processor is making it easier to hear but I’m not sure that I could rely on its signal if I used this radio on holiday. Receive is fine but there’s something “lacking” on transmit, even for a 5w QRP radio.
The plan was to try out my new ultra-small QRP Xiegu G-106 radio from a summit. I had tried it from a park and in fact, made a contact with GB22NH at the UK’s National Hamfest from my back garden, using the small radio and small antenna but the advantage of being on a SOTA summit is that once you spot yourself on SOTAWatch you will undoubtedly get lots of calls (especially for this 6-point summit). In fact I realised later that this summit is also within a POTA park and hence all contacts count for that award scheme as well as for SOTA. I had a report of corrupted audio previously, possibly caused by RF getting into the radio and since that report, I have added clip-on ferrites and more radial wires to the antenna base. I also found that the microphone gain was set too high – hopefully, this test session on the Laber summit will clarify if I still have a problem or not.
The cable car starts at 9 am local time (0700 UTC) so by the time I would be on the summit, it would most likely be too late for any of the DX contacts we have been seeing over the last few weeks into VK on 20m SSB.
Rather than just take my new small radio and its also small, Diamond RHB-8B antenna, I decided to take my normal G90 radio and its antennas as well. The Kommunica HF-PRO2 loaded vertical and the linked dipole and 6-metre fishing pole.
My normal location at Laber is close to the top station of the cable car but looking at the map, there is another area that may have some more space and is still within the activation zone. I would try to go there and see how that was as I could always go back to my normal location if needed. As I wanted to be in the first cabin up, I packed the car and set the alarm for 6:30 am, Monday evening for a not SO early start at 7:45 am on Tuesday morning.
The Activation
DL/AM-060 Laber DA-0003 Ammergauer Alpen region
The drive down was uneventful – a route I have taken many times before. I arrived at the cabin lift’s car park at 8:50. The parking fees like most things have gone up – it is now €5 for 4 hours of parking where it used to be only 3, and the machines only take coins but I was aware and prepared for this.
After buying my lift ticket, I waited for the cable car. This is a small lift, in fact, the oldest still running in Bavaria, perhaps even Germany and there are only 4 cabins on the system, each coming about every 15 minutes. I indeed got in the first car and alone, so that I did not need to worry about COVID but wore my mask anyway (it is no longer compulsory but I’d say about 10-15% of people still wear them when inside public areas and the mandatory wearing is likely to come back in the next few weeks in any case).
On the way up the mountain, I checked the spotted SOTA activators and saw that Andrew VK1AD was still out and working stations in Europe. For that reason, I decided to go straight to my usual spot – a bench on a rise about 30 metres from the lift building and I set up the HF-PRO2 vertical antenna as putting the dipole up here is difficult and would have taken more time. Once I had the equipment set up, I tuned to Andrew’s spotted frequency only to hear an Italian station chatting there. So either Andrew was below this signal or he had already called it a day. I later heard a couple of other VK, home stations one of which I tried to call but there were too many high-powered home stations calling him that I stood no chance.
I wanted to see how I was getting out with the Komunica vertical, so I found a free frequency on 20m, spotted myself and started calling CQ SOTA. The calls came in thick and fast and within 9 minutes, I had 9 contacts in the log, all of them giving me very good reports – often over 5 and 9. These were all stations within Europe as the band had changed to short skip, which is normal from around 0730 UTC at the moment.
Once the calls dried up, I decided to set up the QRP radio as well, after all, I was there to test the new radio. there was enough room to set up both radios and both antennas so that I could switch between to do checks.
My next call on the 20w radio was Mario DJ2MX in Munich – he was a good signal – not as strong as some of the french and UK stations that I had worked earlier but I was pretty sure that Mario would help me with my tests, so I explained the two different radios and antennas and he agreed to make a comparison. On receive Mario was the same strength on both radios but he could not hear me on the G106 with the Diamond antenna. I checked and found the power was down on the low setting of about 1w, so I changed that to the high setting of at least 5W, usually nearer to 7w – he still could not hear me. I also have two microphones for the g106 – the stock one and a modified HT microphone with higher output. None of this helped. Mario said he could hear “something” in the noise but could not really tell that it was me. The next test, once I found the needed BNC to SO239 adapter, was to try the G106 with the Komunica HFPRO2 antenna instead of the Diamond RHB8B. An immediate result! He could now hear me but he also reported what sounded like RF Ingress getting into the audio. again I switch microphones and adjusted the mic gain but nothing helped. I still have a problem when operating with a portable antenna and the g106.
Time was getting on and I wanted to get home around noon, so I thanked Mario for his help (he had to go as well) and then packed up and went to await the next cable car back down the mountain.
Some would say this was a disappointing activation – not making any DX contacts and not working anyone with the small antenna / small radio combination but as my intent was to test the new radio and see where I am with it – it was (in my eyes) a successful trip. The Komunica HFPRO2 performed brilliantly again, the diamond antenna on the other hand was a letdown. I am really happy that I suffered the extra weight of taking both the normal station and the new station up the mountain as had I just taken the G106 and the Diamond antenna, I would most likely have got very few contacts – if any at all.
The weather was also kind, despite a couple of small showers on the way down, the summit was dry and sunny. Not warm but sunny. The views once the mist lifted were also worth the trip.
Photos:
DL/AM-060 Laber
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Equipment taken:
Mountaintop travelling 40-litre rucksack.
Xiegu G90 radio.
Xiegu G106 radio
Komunica Power HF-Pro2-PLUS-T loaded vertical antenna with a modified mini photo tripod with clip-on radials.
Diamond RHB8B loaded HF vertical antenna with modified ultra-small support tripod and counterpoise wires.
Lamdahalbe 6m mini-mast. (not used)
SotaBeams linked dipole (not used).
2 Ah Eremit LifePO4 battery (for G106).
4 Ah Eremit LifePO4 battery (for G90).
4000maH LiHV battery (not used).
Painter’s thick plastic sheet (not used).
Gardener’s nealing pad (not used).
Lightweight headphones.
Smartphone for SOTA spotting.
Logs:
DL/AM-060 Laber
Conclusions:
The “star of the activation” was certainly the Komunica HF-PRO2-PLUS-T antenna, and the flop was the Diamond RHB-8B antenna.
Band conditions had just changed to short skip so it seems 0600-0730 is the best time for long path contacts into VK on 20m SSB at the moment.
The G106 still needs some work to improve the transmitted audio and it needs a better antenna than the Diamond but it needs to be small as the intention with the G106 is to have an ultra-compact “holiday station”.
DD5LP / G8GLM / VK2JI blog 
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