BW-484 Bussen.

Posted on 17/08/2016 by VK2JI DD5LP G8GLM

Preparation:

After considering activating a new 4 point Tirol (Austria) summit (which I had not activated before and hence was not sure about the best access route and how long the walk would be), I decided, I would like to go back to Römerstein and Bussen, which I had not yet re-activated this year. Neither of these summits have difficult or long access routes from the car parks. The distance from the Römerstein car park is about a 15 minute walk up a forest path and Bussen is a (very steep) road access taking about 10 minutes. The problem with activating these summits is getting there from where I live. It takes over 2 hours on Autobahn’s that are constantly being repaired and small back roads where it is very easy to take a wrong turn and get lost.

Since last year however I have changed car and installed a proper car GPS/Radio unit, so I have that rather than relying upon the GPS in my mobile phone. This would be a good test for the car GPS. The day before the planned activation, I programmed in both the complete circle route and favourites for each point – Home, Römerstein and Bussen.

Radio equipment was checked and charged. I decided to pack the SOTABeams linked dipole rather than the Aerial-51 OCF in the bag as I only intended operating on 40m and 20m and the linked dipole is lighter. RF would come from the FT-817 and my much modified Ramsey amplifier. Both of these units now run off internal LIPO batteries with the option to run off external supplies as well if required. I would normally also carry a second battery for the FT-817 but after checking it and finding it had expanded itself to a size that could no longer fit into the FT817 case and also didn’t seem to be holding charge, this (now 4 years old) battery was thrown out and a replacement ordered. Unfortunately by the day of these activations, the replacement hadn’t arrived. In fact it arrived on the day of the activations but after I had left home.

In any case, I only intended making a 20-30 minute activation on each summit, so the existing batteries capacities should be enough. As far as the small (1.7Ah) LIPO in the amplifier was concerned, I did not have any experience how long it would last as on the previous activations I had only used it for a short time. This would be a good test. The amplifier runs on 16V and hence this internal LIPO is a “4S” model. I do have a 3S LIPO and inverter, that I can connect into the amplifier however I don’t like using this as the inverter causes a level of extra RF noise. I now have a 4S external 5aH LIPO as well but at the moment don’t have the needed power connector on that set-up. So on this activation it would be a test to see how long the battery lasts in the amplifier. As it turned out it did sterling service on the first activation but was totally drained by the start of the second activation.

My old, repaired 6m squid pole was to be the mast for both activations although I also packed my 10m one in the car as backup. In both of these beautiful locations, the 6m (realistically 5m), elevation of the inverted V dipole is sufficient and carrying the twice as heavy 10m pole up the hill is not justified.

The Locations:

The locations were DM/BW-078 Römerstein and DM/BW-484 Bussen. Both of these summits are about 2hr. drive from my home QTH. In fact about 2 hours to Römerstein, then 1 hour from Römerstein on to Bussen and then nearly 2 hours home from Bussen, so a lot of driving is involved in activating these two summits, but they are worth 10 and 8 points respectively.

Both locations are some way away from the main routes (Autobahns) and involve some “interesting” country road driving. Please refer to my activation report from 2015 to get more route details and pictures of the Römerstein car park that I use.

The Activation:

Römerstein is easy access with just over a 1Km (15 minutes) walk from the car park on the main road. The weather was fine, but just in case I packed a light rain jacket but didn’t need it at Römerstein. The track from the car park is clearly marked and after about 700m joins the forestry road to take you to the top of the summit with it’s tower, hut and picnicking area.

When I arrived there was a farmer just finishing off cutting and collecting the grass but apart from that I had the area to myself. I had promised myself to go up the tower to take a look at the view however unfortunately the tower was locked and while the address and phone numbers of three key holders are shown on the door, I didn’t want to go to that trouble in the time I had available. I looked around and decided to set up in a group of camping tables that were partially in the shade from the, by now quite warm, sunshine. I used one camping table to support the base of the mast and two others to ties the ends of the dipole off to. A fourth table fully in the shade became my “shack” where the gear was set-up. There is a lot of space ot this summit, which was good as a large family group arrived about 10 minutes later and cooked their lunch at one of the open hearth grills. They used a couple of the other camping tables, so no issues with the antenna wires. They never came over to ask what I was doing, but I had the info brochures out, just in case.

I checked activations that were currently on via Rucksack Radio Tool on my smart phone and decided that the most were on 20m at present, so the dipole was initially set to 20m. I listened for the spotted activators without success, so found a free frequency, started calling CQ SOTA and self spotted (cell phone coverage from both of these summits is fine, so internet – 3G connectivity is no problem). 22 contacts followed in the next 17 minutes. The 25w from the amplifier certainly makes sure I received in general very strong reports, 5-9 was not unusual.

I constantly check for other activators and now a couple had popped up on 40 metres, so down came the antenna, the links were changed and it went back up. My first contact, now with 35w from the amplifier was an S2S contact with OM1DK. Following this, I found a common SOTA frequency 7.118MHz to be free, self spotted and started calling CQ again. 16 more contacts followed in the next 16 minutes. The last of these being another S2S this time with Steve, G(M)1INK/P. It was now time to pack up and head to the next summit. As I started to pick up however, I saw a new activator Petrica YO9RIJ had just spotted himself on 20m, so a quick change of antenna and amplifier settings and I grabbed another S2S before finally packing up and leaving down the track, back to the car.

The trip from Römerstein to Bussen has caused me problems, getting lost, last year but this year it was “plain sailing” with the new GPS and about an hour later I was in the car park below the church and castle ruins at Bussen. I just had to climb that steep road with all the gear…

Bussen. Upon reaching the small park area on the summit between the church and the ruins, I again selected a camping table. This time only one with the ends of the dipoles being pegged into the grass at each end. Set-up went quickly and without problems. When I put out my first call however I had a reply from David IW3IDX to tell me that my audio was distorted. It was at this point that I realised battery levels after the level of activity at Römerstein were depleted. The first action was to turn off the speech compressor that I have built into the microphone and probably doubles the effective output of the rig – but of course also then draws twice the current. The audio on my signal was then fine, but later I saw that the amplifier kept dropping out and I switched to running the FT-817 barefoot at 5w output from Bussen. The conditions had been quite stable from Römerstein however at Bussen signals were up and down to a ridiculous extent with stations often varying between S1 and S9! It is nice that even an S1 signal is able to be heard (albeit only after putting my headphones on) from locations away from metro-noise.

With the reduced power I thought I may have some problems getting contacts however 22 contacts are in the log from the 30 minute activation. That included three S2S contacts – Hans OK/PA3FYG/P on OK/KR-066, Henning LA3NGA/P on LA/TM-049 and Andy MM0FMF/P on GM/WS-150. That last one took some getting as we were working at true S1 levels in both directions and by this time I suspect the FT-817 was probably down to 2.5 watts output.

Partially due to the battery situation and the fact there seemed to be less contacts available on 20m & 40m, after 30 minutes at Bussen, I decided to pack-up and just as I got the last item packed into the rucksack, the rain started. So I was happy I had packed my light rain jacket which I put on for the walk back down the steep hill to the car park – at which point the rain stopped.

The drive home, still using the GPS was “interesting” and at one point, it or I, made a mistake and the corrective route took me over some single lane farm roads and numerous small villages until we got back to main road to the autobahn system. I was glad to get back on the autobahns – that was until I got stuck in a 5km. traffic jam for over 20 minutes just 45 kilometres from home. The delay being caused by one group of road workers slowly packing up their equipment and chatting, while causing chaos on the 2 lane section (now reduced to just one lane) autobahn. I was glad to get home and relax after about five hours driving during the day!

Photos:

Römerstein:

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Bussen:

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Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

Highly modified Ramsey amplifier

SOTABeams linked dipole.

6 metre portable squid pole.

Logs:

DM/BW-078 Römerstein:

DM/BW-484 Bussen:

Conclusions:

I need to plan my battery usage better. Having the amplifier in circuit makes making contacts easier, so I either need to carry a spare/external battery or plan shorter activations. This comes down to a weight question again – for easier summits the extra battery weight may not be an issue. For more difficult summits I will need to monitor battery levels better.

73 ’til the next Summit!

DD5LP/P – August 7th 2016 – DL/AM-180 Berndorfer Buchet.

Posted on 11/08/2016 by VK2JI DD5LP G8GLM

Preparation:

On the SOTA reflector, there was a suggestion to get out onto SOTA summits and activate on 2 metres and as Sunday 7th. August has the 70cm & 2m sections of the “Bayerisches Bergtag” this seemed a safe option, that would be activity around. This section of the BBT only runs from 09:30 to 12:00 UTC so that pretty well defined my planned operating window. For equipment, I decided to take my 2m Moxon antenna and a short (hand-held) mast along with the FT-817. I would also take along the normal HF kit ( Squid pole, OCF, small amplifier etc) in case I got no contacts on 2m.

My plan was to activate Irschenhausen DL/BE-094 as I hadn’t activated that (local) summit this year yet to get its one point. As you will read below however, plans changed and I ended up back at my most often activated summit Berndorfer Buchet DL/AM-180.

The Location:

Berndorfer Buchet is the hill overlooking the village of Paehl which is at the bottom of the Ammersee (one of five lakes near Munich). It is at worst 45 minutes drive from my home QTH near the town of Landsberg am Lech it was on my route to Irchenhausen, about another 20 minutes drive via Starnberg.

There is a car park on the side road to Kuflatsch and then there is about a ten minutes walk along the forest tracks and up the side of the mount to the summit. The views from the summit are limited as it is a wooded summit, so lots of trees block what would otherwise be some nice views.

The Activation:

It was a sunny day (at last) and the wife asked if I could drop her off at the lake side on the Ammersee and pick her up on the way back. This was basically on my route, so no worries there. After dropping her off, however the problems started. One bottleneck in my route is the town of Diessen and on THIS particular day, they had decided to run a flea market! The combination of the heavier than normal traffic because of the good weather and this flea market with no adequate parking arranged, mean that the town was blocked. There were also trucks trying to get through. Needless to say my available time quickly drained away and I threaded my way through this mess. Then I heard in the radio that a section of the autobahn near Starnberg, which I had planned to use was blocked and to allow an extra 35 minutes for journeys. While I could have taken back roads and avoided the autobahn, others would be doing the same. So the decision was quickly made that once I got to the end of the road up to Berndorfer Buchet, I would not drive past it but rather down it and activate from DL/AM-180 once more.

Once I arrived at the summit, the Moxon got unstrapped from the rucksack, attached to the small pole and set up provisionally in a tree stump while I unpacked the FT817, plastic ground sheet, log book etc. Checking Sotawatch via Rucksack radio Tool, I saw some SOTA activators already spotted but on HF not 2m. I decided to first of all try 2m. I tuned around and indeed there were a couple of BBT contest stations on. Luckily I had foreseen the possibility that I might have to fall back to Berndorfer Buchet and had noted down its Maidenhead locator as well ass that from Irschenhausen, so I had the data I needed for a contest QSO. I worked a very strong contest station, so I knew the equipment was working and then found a free frequency, self-spotted on SOTA and called CQ SOTA on and off for 10 minutes, without a single call. I then saw that Luc ON7DQ was spotted as active in LX – I listened for him, but heard nothing. Going by the contest stations I was hearing in DL, OE, OK & I – the propagation may have been there but only if Luc had been beaming in my direction and I in his. I trid some calls on 2m FM on 145.50, also with no takers.

I then carried on to work a few more SSB contest stations before packing up for my return journey including an extra 10km to avoid the traffic jams in Diessen.

Photos:

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Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

PAR antennas 2m Moxon beam.

Short aluminium “holding” pole.

Log:

Conclusions:

The activation showed me how easy it is to set up on 2m compared to HF but from a SOTA point of vew if the BBT contest had not been on, I would have got no contacts at all. The propagation was there – the 2m chasers were not.

73 ’til the next Summit!

DD5LP/P – June 17th. 2016 – DL/AM-156 Schneidberg.

Posted on 18/06/2016 by VK2JI DD5LP G8GLM

Preparation:

Ignacio EA2BD suggested on the SOTA reflector an “HF Minimalist / QRP SOTA” event for the weekend of 17-19th. June. The idea being to get all radio equipment down under 1 Kilo (CW equipment) or 2.5 Kilo (SSB station). This is not as easy as it seems and it’s an interesting exercise in seeing what all the weight in the backpack is. I found that by taking only the FT817 with its internal LIPO battery and microphone, my log and pen, the SOTABeams linked dipole and my 5-metre fibreglass mast, I just “creep under” the limit at 2.4 kilos. Of course, non-radio gear (food, water weather protection etc.) exceeds this amount but the weight restriction is specifically on the radio gear.

All equipment was prepared and I only had to wait for a day when it wasn’t constantly raining. The forecast was for a three-hour window without rain on Friday followed by Saturday and Sunday raining all day. So there was my possibility – Early afternoon Friday, it would have to be. What actually happened with the weather was that the whole of Friday afternoon and Saturday remained dry and sunny. WEATHER FORECASTERS!!

The Location:

Although not too far away from where I live, I had never activated Schneidberg, so there was a risk that access could be a problem – here is the hiking map of the area that I went by:

The top right of the map is the end of the “normal” road from Wildsteig which also has a small car park. The summit itself is in the middle of the bottom edge of the map, however getting to the end of the red track to its right, puts one in the activation zone from where it is valid to transmit “as if you were on the summit”. My hope was to see how far up the tracks I could get before the road either became restricted or un-drivable.

The Activation:

I decided to set off at 11 a.m. local with a planned start to the activation of 1 p.m. As I left home it was still grey and raining a little however the further south I drove the brighter the weather became. When I got to the car park at the crossroads, I could see that up ahead there was a sign indicating no vehicles allowed although it was a perfectly tarmacked road. Off to the left, the road had the sign I had seen before with the text saying no access except for forestry vehicles. The road in the direction I wanted to go has no text just the no vehicles allowed sign:

As I did not, at this time, know what was up the road, I decided to play it safe and park in the car park and walk what I calculated would be just a little less than 3 kilometres to the end of the road.

As I was walking up the first (steep) section of road, I was passed by a Ute/Pickup truck, which could I suppose have been the farmer’s family – however the sign did not say “Anlieger Frei” (access for those who live here), the plain circle is supposed to be NO vehicular access at all. On my way back down this same section of road I had to step to the side to let a large tractor past – again it makes sense that the tractor should use this route but the sign means absolutely NO vehicles allowed. Next time, I will ignore the sign as it seems locals do!

The walk flattened out a little after about 500 metres and soon after changed from a tarmacked road to a gravelled one – but still 100% drivable with a normal car. Luckily at this point, the weather was fine, however, I had brought a heavy waterproof jacket, just in case the weather changed. As it turns out extra weight that I didn’t need. after about another 1.7 Km on a relatively flat track, I needed to turn left to head up to the summit. Interestingly this “track” was in fact a tarmacced road again and it was also steep again, so I guess the steep parts are tarmacced so that they can have vehicles get up them in winter. The total time for the walk from the car park to the edge of the AZ was 30 minutes walking at a fast pace. Needless to say, once I arrived on-site, the first thing I did was sit down and take a drink of water as it was now getting quite warm. I set up my station within a wooded area to get a little shade and started off on 40 metres. It was at this point that the cell signal started playing silly. It varied (on two different networks – Telekom & Vodaphone – I have a dual SIM phone) from solid 3G coverage to not being able to even send an SMS. This is the first time I have seen these strange situations – I can only guess there was a local source of interference on 900 MHz or thereabouts which knocked out both networks. I did manage to get an SMS out to alert my operation which, despite the long walk, I started about 15 minutes earlier than expected. Once I had worked all the 40m chasers I announced on 40m that I would now try 20m – around 14.285.

As I was using the SOTABeams Band Hopper linked dipole, I had to lower the antenna to change bands and in doing so the antenna became stuck in some branches. Once I had cleared this up and raised the antenna again I tried again to self-spot, this time with no success either via 3G or SMS on either Cell network. I decided to put out a call in any case and while 14.285 was busy, I found 14.295 was free and called there. After a couple of CQ calls I was called by Mikael as S5/PA3BHF he was on holiday from Reading in England (he has both Dutch and English calls) – in Sevinca in SE Slovenia. Interestingly he had just happened to tune across the frequency (he is not a SOTA chaser) and called me and he was also using 5 watts from an FT-817 to a dipole! We exchanged 5-9/5-7 reports and chatted for 10 minutes. After this, I put more CQs out without response and checked 14.285 and saw it was free and then put out a call there to which Don G0RQL came back with a very strong signal and offered to spot me on this frequency and that brought a few more contacts before I decided that with 30 minutes walk back to the car, I’d better pack up before the forecast rain caught me out. I finished up with 13 contacts for the activation, a little less than normal, but then when I took the antenna down it seemed that I may have opened the 30m link on one side of the dipole instead of the 20m one, in the confusion with the antenna tangling up in the trees, so on 20m I would not have been radiating so well!.

Photos:

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Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

SOTABeams linked dipole.

5 metre squid pole.

Log:

Conclusions:

Don’t expect Cell phone coverage to stay constant. Despite having access to the two main networks in Germany – I did not have reliable coverage.

73 ’til the next Summit!

DD5LP/P – May 25th 2016 – DL/AM-001 Peissenberg.

Posted on 26/05/2016 by VK2JI DD5LP G8GLM

Preparation.

Following an unsuccessful attempt to contact the SOTA activators on Norfolk Island two days ago, this was another attempt. In the mean time however there had been constant rain and hence access to my closest summit (Berndorfer Buchet) would certainly be washed out. As I could not have any delays, as this activation again had to be very early (pre 8am local time), to hit the long path window, I decided to head to a drive up summit instead. I have regularly activated Piessenberg, so I would not obtain any activators points for this summit but the purpose of the trip was to try to get another VK9 summit in the log, so activator points were not important.

I checked the already packed bags the day before the trip. I can now simply “grab and go” with my SOTA gear. Only if I intend to have a long activation or multiple activations, do I need to pack additional hardware (mainly batteries)..

The Location:

Pessenberg (or Hoher Peissenberg to give it its full name) is about 45 minutes drive away from home. It has a beautiful and large church on the top, which was getting its annual outside repaint job when I was there. The location I normally use has the antenna running roughly east-west meaning radiation from the dipole would be going north-south – 90 degrees away from my ideal direction for long path. In fact given that the large church is directly north, the antenna probably only “sees” south perfectly. That said, with the centre of the Inverted V at only 5 metres above ground, most radiation will be going almost vertically in any case (NVIS). Prior to setting up, I did take a look at a track that runs off from the car park in a north-south direction, but this dropped off far to steeply and there was no likely spots to set up at. I also took a look at the end of the church. This location would be fine for a vertical antenna but a dipole would cross two paths, that are well used. So in the end, I was back at my usual location on the south side of the church.

The Activation.

Out of bed at about 5:30am and prepared and off by 6:15. The drive down was fine, the traffic wasn’t too bad and of course, I knew the route. On arrival I found Peissenberg, in the clouds – a fine day was forecast but it seems the clouds were hanging on as long as they could! As discussed under “The location” above, on arrival, I scouted an alternative set-up location but ended up back at my normal spot. I listened for a while and monitored for spots from Ron VK2AFW/9 on Norfolk Island. I decided as Ron was still spotted being on CW on 40m and 20m at 05:30 UTC, I could put out a call and check conditions. I managed a Greek, a Swedish and an Austrian contact but these took some time. It seems that I could not get to most of Europe (I think the skip distance was long at this point). I can normally work Mike 2E0YYY/P in the UK and he was spotted but I could not hear a thing on his frequency. At about 0600 UTC conditions changed though and I had a run of contacts from all around Europe. When I saw Ron spot on 14.310 – which is the frequency I hade been on for the last 40 minutes, I cleared the frequency to give Ron a chance at some EU SSB contacts. I thought I heard something in there, but so weak, I would not be able to work it. I then managed an S2S with Mike 2E0YYY/P in the UK, and found he had also looked for me earlier and heard nothing.

It seems that about 0602 the skip changed for long to short and that was the end of any Long Path chance of a contact with VK9.

Following my short chat with Mike, I took one last listen for Ron (who it seems had been able to work into Japan, but not Europe) and then I packed up and left.

Photos:

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Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

SOTABeams Band Hopper linked dipole.

5 metre squid pole.

Homebrew 160m – 15m amplifier (30/20w)

Log:

Conclusions:

No success yet with a contact into VK9 but again the kit worked faultlessly – the problem was the propagation. Perhaps there will be another opportunity for a VK9 S2S contact before the group leave early next week?

I will check out the location at the end of the church, the next time I activate Peissenberg.

73 ’til the next Summit!

DD5LP/P – May 18th and 23rd 2016 – DL/AM-180 Berndorfer Buchet.

Posted on 19/05/2016 by VK2JI DD5LP G8GLM

Preparation for May 18th:

A week before the first activation, Andrew VK1MBE contacted me to ask if we could set up a Summit-to-Summit contact at some point as he needed a second DL association S2S contact for his Mountain Hunter-S2S award. Of course, I was happy to oblige. I had actually given Andrew his first DL S2S contact from Peissenberg about a year ago. A both weather and radio conditions have been poor of late, I wanted to get out and try for a new Long Path contact into Australia – after all my call sign is DD5 L P HI. I checked and saw to my surprise, that I hadn’t activated Berndorfer Buchet yet this year (it is the closest summit to my home location) and I had made contacts into VK from there previously, so we agreed a date in the hope that there would be a break in the continuous rain we’d been having and all was set.

I packed my bags the day before the trip. In fact it was more an un-pack of what I no longer needed. I was taking my home made amplifier along, however I had made some modifications since last time I had it out. One modification was to install an internal LIPO battery in the case. I did this for two reasons, firstly to avoid having the weight of carrying the external battery bag which has two 5000 mAH 3 cell LIPO batteries (one as a spare) and an inverter to take the 11v from the batteries up to the 16v that I now run the amplifier on and secondly to avoid the RF noise from that inverter, which runs quietly at 13.4v output but not at 16 volts. I had also added an extra relay so that the cooling fan (brushless fan, that also creates HF “hash”) only comes on when we are in transmit mode.

The homebrew amplifier with the lid off the case – note the small 1600 maH 4S LIPO battery running across the case in the lower part of the picture.

I also chose to take the SOTAbeams linked dipole as I only intended to operate on 20 metres, so there would be no need to lower and raise the antenna to change bands and the SOTABeams antenna is lighter than the Spiderbeam OCF dipole that I normally take as it has no need for a Balun.

Preparation for May 23rd:

With the WIA AGM being held on Norfolk Island, a few SOTA activators are present who plan to activate the (relatively easy to get to) VK9/NO-001 Mount Bates SOTA Summit. Indeed both Paul VK5PAS/VK9PAS and Peter VK3PF/9 planned an activation around the time that long path to Europe could be open on the 23rd. of May.

Given the successful activation on the 18th. (read details below), and with the hope that the forecast heavy rain would hold off, I put out my SOTA gear ready, planning the same equipment and location as had worked on the Previous Wednesday.

The Location:

The Activation May 18th:

A fairly early rise to get to the summit for 0630 UTC when we expected radio conditions to be at their best. The weather looked good as well and indeed it turned in to a sunny day, if still cold while I was on the summit. As normal I arrived earlier than planned for the activation but then was delayed by something as silly as the support cord on the end of the dipole tangling itself up while I was trying to find the best place to tie the inveted-v antenna off to.

Once I had the equipment running I put out a call for Andrew on our agreed frequency of 14.310MHz and got no reply – but I was still 30 minutes early at 06:00 UTC. The planned contact time was 06:30 UTC. So I put out a CQ and spotted myself – no answers. I started to wonder if I was getting out or whether there might be a bad connection somewhere. Tuning around I found Paul RZ6BR in Labinsk, Russia. He was calling for DX but after a couple of calls with no response, I called him, apologised that I was not DX but could he please give me a report. No problems he gave me a 5-9 report with deep QSB. We had a short chat and then I left him to his calling and I went back to 14.310 and put out another CQ SOTA. I then heard a quite faint but understandable VK4RF – Rick in Queensland, Australia. Unfortunately when I passed it back, he didn’t come back to me. Well at least I knew now I was really getting out. In fact Rick tried a couple more times over the next 30 minutes, until we finally made the contact – thanks for persevering Rick! On my next CQ SOTA call I heard “summit to summit” and it was indeed Andrew VK1MBE/P on Mount Ainsley VK1/AC-040 and we exchanged 4-2 reports both ways. The contact was possible because we both had low or no, noise level at each end I think. That being said 15 minutes later (at 06:30 UTC) Andrew was up to 5-4 or 5-5 strength, so the original planned time would probably have been the ideal time for the contact, but we made it – which made for a succesful activation. I also had calls from two other Russian, one Bulgarian and one Greek chaser all at 5-9+ strength. My last contact was with Pedro EA2CKX at nothing like his normal strength, so I think the skip distance was long, blocking out most of western europe for me.

The Activation May 23rd:

I woke up even earlier for this activation than for the previous one, expecting that Norfolk Island may become accessible earlier than the ACT being somewhat further East. I had a good run down to Berndorfer Buchet taking just 35 minutes to drive there. One more trudge up the hill, all the time hoping that the rain would hold off. The skies were threatening but often that can be the case and no rain comes. I was set up and operational by 05:30 UTC (7:30am local). Although the VK9 stations had been spotted I could not hear anything – it was a little early for long path, only expecting something possibly from 06:00 UTC onwards. So in the meantime I put out a call made a contact or two and then went back to monitoring 14.310MHz where the VK9 stations were operating on. From time to time I could hear “something” in the noise but not at a workable strength. I heard a few VK chasers working Peter VK3PF/9 but I could not hear Peter. Mike 2E0YYY was also out in the UK on this “VK9-hunt” so I had a quick conversation with him and then I went back to listening for Norfolk Island (NI). I even put out a couple of “blind calls” with the hope that the NI guys might be listening and hear me. Unfortunately the radio conditions were not there on the 23rd. and apart from Mike working Ernie VK3DET who was about 3-3 with me and Mike, there were no long path contact to VK this day.The inter-Europe contacts suffered from very deep QSB at times, so it seems the band was really unsettled.

On my drive home, the rain started and continued for over 24 hours solid, si at least in that factor I had been lucky. After this rain, Berndorfer Buchet will be difficult to access. So if I get another chance of an NI S2S contact on another day, it will have to be from a different summit.

Photos 18th. May:

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Photos 23rd. May:

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Equipment (both activations):

Yaesu FT817ND.

SOTABeams Band Hopper linked dipole.

5 metre squid pole.

Homebrew 160m – 15m amplifier (30/20w)

Log 18th. May:

Log 23rd. May:

Conclusions:

The first activation was a success. The equipment worked as it should and I managed the contact into VK with about 20 watts. Would it have been possible with just 5 watts? I think so, but it would have been a harder job for Andrew!

The second activation, while not managing the desired contact into Norfolk Island, proved the kit again, having had its batteries charged after the first activation, I could simply grab the bags and go and everything worked. I am getting very close to being able to take ONLY the camera bag on these activations.

73 ’til the next Summit!

DD5LP/P – April 21st. 2016 – DL/AM-176 Rentschen.

Posted on 22/04/2016 by VK2JI DD5LP G8GLM

Preparation:

As part of my attempt to get a station together that could operate on 80m from a SOTA summit. I had built a drastically shortened 80m dipole by including coils in its length. This was created at home based to a similar design that I have already installed at the home QTH only without a balun and of lighter materials but of course until I tested it out in the open on a summit, I did not know whether it really works or not. The problem with portable antennas for 80m is their size and very few summits have the space to put up a full sized 80m dipole, so a smaller antenna was needed. I had originally intended going to Ammerleite however Rentschen gives a lot more space and the distance from the car to the summit is a lot less, allowing me to pack more test equipment in the car in case I needed it. My wife also agreed to come along and as we then take our dog, Rentschen was a better choice. It also would earn me 1 activator point as the last time I activated it was in 2015 whereas Ammerleite would not.

I had also expanded my Ramsey QAMP to operate between 80m and 15m using switched low pass filters in its output and while this had been tested on the bench, it had also not been tested in the field with the changes. As I did not expect many contacts on 80m, I decided running 30w from the amplifier rather thn just the 5w from the FT817 might be essential, so the QAMP would be taken long.

The Location:

Rentschen is about 45 minutes drive from my home. A drive I had done several times before and so no maps or navigation equipment was needed to get to site. Rentschen is a large grassed plateau sitting above the surrounding area. The actual summit is marked by a small trig-point stone, where there is also a small post, which while fimsey, can act as a mast support. The summit location is only about a 100 metres from the road, where I parked the car.

The Activation:

Once I had put the new antenna up, and laid out and connected the rig and amplifier, I took a tune around 80m and hearing nothing I went bck to my alerted operating frequency, 3670 KHz and started calling CQ SOTA while also sending a spot. I don’t know why but cell phone coverge from this summit was marginal and I had to place my phone in a particular position before it would send and receive SOTA spot data. This was actually 30 minutes ahead of my planned activation time, but after a couple of calls I heard a very faint signal, it was Herbert OE9HRV but why was he so weak? I thought I might have a cable break, so I disconnected the amplifier and connected the new antenna directly into the FT817 and then Herbert was full strength, so I tried calling him just with the 5w from the FT817 but it seems he had given up by this point. I got a report from Mike G6TUH that he had heard me at 5-3 but then I droped into the noise. I suppose this might have been first of all the 30w and then dropping to 5w but at that time of day a signal on 80m shouldn’t be able to get to the UK, about 500Km is the normal limit, which is mid France from where I was located. In any case, something was wrong with the amplifier. On receive the antenna connection should switch straight through, so the new low pass filters couldn’t be the problem, but a broken internal cable could be. In any case it was not something I could find and fix while out portable, so unfortunately the 80m antenna test was inconclusive and I’ll have to try again on another day. So down came the 80m antenna and up went the Aerial-51 OCF dipole and I ran off a few contacts on 40m to qualify the summit, so the afternoon was not a total waste of time. In fact it wasn’t anyway as it had been a nice sunny, warm, but not too warm, afternoon out.

Photos:

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Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

Drastically shortened 80m dipole.

Spiderbeam Aerial-51 UL-404 off centre fed dipole.

5 metre squid pole.

Ramsey QAMP 80 through 15m amplifier and batteries

Log:

Conclusions:

Although the test was inconclusive, the fact that a signal was received into the UK, looks hopeful.

I fell fowl of the problem of changing two items at the same time. The QAMP must have a strange problem specific to the 80m wiring as it worked OK on 40m. Perhaps on my next test, I should simply try with just the FT-817 and if that works fine, then added the repaired amplifier into the circuit?

73 ’til the next Summit!

DD5LP/P – March 28th 2016 – DL/AL-167 Falkenstein.

Posted on 29/03/2016 by VK2JI DD5LP G8GLM

Preparation:

Originally planned 10 days earlier to be activated with Eisenberg, time was running out to get Falkenstein (a reasonably easy summit) in before the end of the 3 point winter bonus. I would have liked to have also activated the nearby DL/AL-166 Zwolferkopf, however as the wife initially agreed to come along, I dropped that extra 2-2.5 hour commitment. I then decided I would try use 80m during the activation and stay a little longer at Falkenstein. As it turned out my wife could not come along after all. As I wanted to try 80m and I knew space was at a premium (especially on this Easter Monday when I expected several other visitors to be there), I decided I would take my 10 metre mast along as well as the normal 5 metre one, as if I could get the centre of the linked dipole higher, I would not need to go out as far as I would with the five metre mast to get the 80m dipole in and not touching the ground.

The Location:

I had activated Falkenstein previously along with Zwolferkopf, which used to be a dual-summit with both German and Austrian SOTA summit code allocations but no longer has this added attraction. Falkenstein sits above the town of Pfronten very close to the Austrian-German border. The access to Falkenstein is interesting in that it is via a private one-way road that is open in the upwards direction for 40 minutes of the hour and in the downwards direction for 10 minutes of the hour (there is a 5 minute gap between the two time zones to avoid contention of the road use). Access to the road costs €4 payable at the start of the road in a machine in a pay and display operation. The drive up the road is interesting with tight hairpin curves and no protection on the side of the road from sheer drops at some points. It takes less than 5 minutes to navigate up the road.

The Activation:

The small public car park is located about 50m vertical height below the summit. There are car parks further up the hill but these are reserved for the people staying at the hotel under the castle (a rather expensive, high class one). The first time I was at Falkenstein I saw Ferrari’s, Jaguars, a Lamborghini and a couple of the top end Audis, Mercedes and BMWs, so you can judge the clientel of the hotel. You have to actually walk up through the hotels car park to the start of the path up to the castle. There was a big sign saying no winter service – which means the path is not cleared in winter and while to this point there had not been very much snow around, the path had hard packed ice and snow on it making it difficult to climb safely. Luckily I had chosen to put my hiking boots on at the car, despite the bright sunshine and probably 8-10 degrees temperature. After setting off from the car, I actually turned back and collected the fasten-on spikes for my boots. A decision that was a very good one when I needed to come back down with more weight than usual, with the extra mast.

On arriving at the castle ruins (the highest in Germany and another of King Ludwig II’s buildings) I first looked at whether I could possibly set-up at the front of the castle with the antenna basically on the front wall of the ruins. This of course would be far from ideal and also would block access for the public. The last time I came, I set up at the rear of the ruins but again the high castle walls did nothing to help my signal. I decided to take a look inside and although not obvious there is a section or railing that is actually a gate that your can go through and although there are no more floors inside the (church sized) castle, steps have been built up to a viewing platform at the far end of the ruins. As I was the only one there at the time I decided to check this out as a location. The fact that when I got to the top there was a table there, made my decision for me. Unfortunately I would not be able to get an 80m antenna in here either, so all thoughts of trying 80m were dropped. Perhaps next time an end-fed half wave antenna thrown out down the hillside from the top of the castle ruins could be an option? In any case this time I got busy and put up the usual Aerial-51 40m OCF but this time on top of the 10m mast as space was also cramped for this antenna. For the first time in many activations, I was able to fly the SOTA flag, although with no wind, it drooped more than flew.

After 15 minutes the equipment set up – FT817 + Ramsey QAMP + Aerial-51 OCF on the 10 metre mast. This was a trial of the new modification I had made to the fan in the amp, so that it only turns on when I am transmitting (and so avoids the rf-noise from the brushless fan motor) and with an increased output of 20 watts on 20m and 30 watts on 40m by running the amplifier at 16v. I decided to start on 20m – no fan noise, great but then I realised there was still some QRM and remembered what I had found the last time I was here. Something – most likely the microwave relay or mobile phone cell station on top of the hotel puts out so much RF hash across 10m through 20m that signals have to be really strong to be worked. My first 3 contacts on 20m were difficult and I decided to switch to 40m which doesn’t have this RF interference but was full with activity making finding a free frequency difficult. I had to move a couple of times due to interference from other stations. I finished off the activation on 20m with quite a few contacts despite the local QRM and assisted by headphones. I actually managed 3 S2S contacts during the activation, which was a nice bonus.

During my activation, more and more people came up to take in the views and I ended up explaining what Amateur Radio is to a couple of semi-interested people. One surprising visitor was from my home county in the UK, East Yorkshire and he had previously known a local Radio Amateur some 40 years earlier in Hull, so it was good to have a bit of a chat in English for a while. The weather was beautiful however rain had been forecast for the afternoon and while more and more visitors were arriving at the ruins, I decided to call it a day at about noon local time after a one hour activation.

After packing up (which took a while longer than normal as I had to do it around the people there), I carefully picked my way down the path and stopped to put the spikes on my boots at the most icy spot (which despite the sunshine, still hadn’t melted). I arrived back at the car 5 minutes late for the downward time window for the private, single track road. I wasn’t worried, it gave me a chance to eat my packed lunch and check a few emails (no problem with 3G/Internet coverage from this summit).

The drive home was uneventful and the forecast rain only came the next day. All in all a nice day out which if I had tried to do Zwolferkopf as well might have been too much. I’ll go back and do that one in summer when the track up through the forest will be both clear of snow and easier to see.

Photos:

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Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

Spiderbeam Aerial-51 UL-404 off centre fed dipole.

10 metre DX-Wire mini-mast.

Ramsey QAMP 20/40m amplifier & PSU (5Ah 3S LIPO plus battery booster).

Log:

Conclusions:

Propagation is still not good – in fact it’s probably as bad as I have experienced on a summit and the extra power from the QAMP definitely helps to get me heard over the QRM.

If with higher band propagation getting generally worse, using 80 metres is going to provide a physical challenge. Getting an 80m dipole in on some of the busier summits like this one will be difficult. End fed antennas may be an answer as long as we can also get the needed counterpoise out as well.

The QAMP is working well with the increased power output, but there is still probably 1 S-point of noise added when the amplifier is turned on as this is no longer coming from the brushless fan I need to find where it is coming from – perhaps the battery booster when it is on load, even just the small load of the RF-Vox circuit in the QAMP. Perhaps I need to trigger transmit directly from the FT-817 accessory socket rather than using RF-Vox. One thing is for certain, the amount of receive noise added now is a lot less than when the fans were running on receive.

73 ’til the next Summit!

DD5LP/P – March 18th 2016 – DL/AL-171 Eisenberg.

Posted on 19/03/2016 by VK2JI DD5LP G8GLM

Preparation:

Having had to abort the activation of Eisenberg and Falkenstein about 6 weeks earlier due car problems (turbo on the engine failed and wrote off both the turbo charger and the main engine block, making the car a write-off), I decided this would be a good way to try out the new car, while picking up the winter bonus points before the end of March. I had also done some changes to my small Ramsey QAMP amplifier that I use with the FT-817. As well as increasing the power by raising the voltage from the 13.5v to 16v (the power transistors are supposed to run at 28v for full output), I had also added some suppression to the brushless cooling fan that I have fitted.

As both summits are only about 15 minutes walk from each car park, this was going to be a “two-bag” activation, taking more equipment than essential, in case something failed and so that I could test out a couple of different configurations.

The Location:

Access to Eisenberg is best made from the car park of the Schlossberalm Zell restaurant, where I intended to have lunch. It’s a really friendly restaurant with fantastic views and simple, good food. This is a good summit to go to if you have others with you who are not interested in radio but are happy sitting on a sun desk enjoying some drinks and food. Eisenberg is about a hours drive from my home and on the route to Falkenstein above Pfronten which is about another 20 minutes drive away, making these two and four point summits a good (easy) pair to combine. Access to Falkenstein is via a private road (€4 charge for use) which has a timed 1 way system with 45 minutes in each hour for cars going up and 15 minutes every hour for cars to drive down. About half way along this private road there is a track which leads off to Zwolferkopf, another SOTA four point summit about a 25-30 minutes walk up through the forests and along the ridge. I was not intending to activate Zwolferkopf on this trip unless I had a lot of free time as it would need the additional walk from either the top or bottom of the private road as parking is not allowed at the start of the track.

The Activation:

Since most snow where I live had melted a couple of days earlier, I exected no snow and indeed all the way up to the Schlossbergalm Zell car park under Eisenberg, very little was to be seen. Luckily I decided to put my hiking boots on rather than go in my training shoes as half way up the track to the castle ruins the track was covered in snow and worse, as people had walked through the snow the previous day and the snow had melted and re-frozen overnight, much of the track at several points was pure ice. I wish I had packed my add-on shoe spikes as this was so bad but I hadn’t packed them, so with my 9 kilos of radio equipment in two bags, I carefully crept up the track. On some parts of the track the snow had melted and so there was leave covered ground to stand on and on some parts there was fresh, untrodden snow, both of which were better than walking on the ice. The ascent took 20 minutes instead of my usual 10 minutes but as I was ahead of schedule and the sun was out, this was not a problem.

I took my time setting up the gear on the lookout platform on the castle ruins before any other walkers got there and was on the air at 09:40 UTC, still 20 minutes ahead of my alerted time. When unwinding the wire on the Spiderbeams UL-404 OCF dipole I found one kink, that had taken the PVC covering off the wire and it looked as if it might have also broken some of the wire strands inside, so I taped up this part of the antenna to avoid any further damage and hoped all was well with the antenna (once I got it home and checked, the wire core hadn’t been broken luckily).

I first tried calling and spotting on 20 metres as I saw that there had been some SOTA activity on 20 metres 30 minutes previously. Nothing heard, no replies. I tuned around and the band sounded very quiet. There were a couple of Italain stations on but not much apart from that. I started to wonder if the antenna was actually broken (in fact later other stations confirmed this was simply very bad propagation on 20m at the time). So I switched over to 40m and after a little time had plenty of calls from chasers. The problem on 40m was the amount of traffic there – the opposite effect to 20m and finding a free spot to call that wasn’t being splattered over by a QRO station on a nearby frequency was difficult. Perhaps having found that 20m was dead, the whole of the active European HF population had moved to 40m? I did try 20m again a few times and at the end of the day managed two contacts on 20m – one of which was an S2S contact with Leszek SQ9MDF on SP/BS-005.

Talking of QRO, I was running more power than I have been doing for a while. The modified Ramsey QAMP linear amplifier now produces 20w on 20m and 30w on 40m. The reports I was receiving back on 40m reflected this. In some cases I was getting a better report than I was giving. Part of the reason could be that there was some local broadband interference from equipment on the summit. I also have an outstanding problem with noise from the brushless fan that I have mounted in the QAMPs case, the pre-activation suppression work had not been successful.

After, for me, a long activation of an hour on-the-air and with the difficult conditions on both 20m and 40m, I decided not to go on and activate Falkenstein. I’ll look at activating Falkenstein and possibly Zwolferkopf as my next activation. If this warm weather continues the snow on the tracks at the even higher summits should clear.

Photos:

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Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

Spiderbeam Aerial-51 UL-404 off centre fed dipole.

5 metre squid pole.

Ramsey QAMP 20/40m amplifier

Log:

Conclusions:

Propagation can be very bad at times. Perhaps as we come towards the low point in this sunspot cycle, I should look at the low bands (80m) for contacts from summits?

The QAMP is working well with the increased power output, but the 2-3 S points of noise coming from the brushless fan is bad and I need to find a solution. Most recomendations for equipment with these types of fans is to run them off a separate PSU as the interference comes back down the supply leads. A separate PSU is not practical, so I may add a relay so that the fan only comes on when I am on transmit.

73 ’til the next Summit!

G8GLM/P – UK visit Feb 2016. Tees to Wash region. G/TW-005 Normanby Top and G/TW-001 Urra Moor.

Posted on 20/02/2016 by VK2JI DD5LP G8GLM

Preparation

As I didn’t manage to activate G/TW-001, the last time I was in the UK in November, I wanted to complete it in this visit. At the same time G/TW-003 isn’t that far away and so might also be possible. As I have already activated G/TW-002 and G/TW-004, I would just then have G/TW-005 to completely activate all summits in G/TW, so perhaps I might be able to fit that one into the plans as well.

The original plan was to activate G/TW-001 & 3 on the weekend of the 20/21 Feb, but as you’ll read later, the weather forecasts said this wasn’t going to be a good idea so some rescheduling around other plans was needed.

Now what about equipment? Well as I was flying from Germany to the UK both weight and size were considerations. The Qamp and its Lipo batteries were not packed, so these will be qrp (5w) activations. What about the antenna? On my last visit to the UK I brought my tripod mounted diamond RHM-8B loaded hf vertical and it did not work well! I found the problem a couple of weeks later, the counterpoise needed to be kept off the ground. I still didn’t have confidence in the vertical over the dipole however, so I packed the 5m fibreglass telescopic pole and the spiderbeam dipole as well as the vertical.

The Locations:

The G/TW-001, 2 and 3 summits are relatively close to each other in North Yorkshire. G/TW-004 is further south in East Yorkshire and G/TW-005 is still further south in Lincolnshire. Luckily my planned trip has two bases, one in East Yorkshire and one in North Yorkshire.

Having already activated G/TW-004 and G/TW-002 on previous trips, I wanted to try to activate G/TW-005 Normanby Top, G/TW-001 Urra Moor and possibly G/TW-003 Guisborough Moor.

The Activations:

While my UK visit was split into two parts, activation of Normanby Top G/TW-005 would need to take place in the first half when I was still based in Hull. It was decided to try to beat the forecast bad weather and activate on Wednesday morning (17th. Feb.). The trip down, over the Humber Bridge and past the airfield where I had arrived a couple of days earlier, was uneventful except that it started to rain.

We, my brother Jim G8DCD and myself, were not going to be able to outrun the weatherfront and indeed when we arrived on site (I wont call this a summit as it’s a large plateau), the rain had changed to driving sleet. As it looked unlikely to stop any time soon, we sought out a position far enough past the radio towers to hopefully avoid any interference and I quickly set up a very basic station. I was not even able to put down my usual painters sheet as the high winds blew it away so all operation was performed standing with the FT-817 hung around my neck with the coax running off to the dipole on the usual 5m squid pole. I decided 40m was probably going to give the quickest activation, however despite this being mid-week there was hardly a free frequency on the band, I found one slot at 7.180 MHz so I started calling cq sota, while fumbling with, now frozen, fingers to send out a spot.

Luckily it seems I was putting a reasonable signal into North Germany and quickly bagged two contacts. Fred, DL8DXL from South Germany was the next in the log with my report only being a 3-3, so it seems propagation was not great for longer distances. The final (4th.) entry into a now very wet log, was Terry G0VWP who was mobile in the York area. With everything now wet and/or frozen, I decided to pull the plug and take down and pack everything away while my hands could still feel anything!

So what I had expected to be an easy activation, turned out, thanks to the weather, not to be easy at all!

The other activation(s) were at first planned for Saturday 20th. February, then moved to Sunday the 21st. followed by Tuesday the 23rd. and finally back to Monday 22nd. because of the constantly changing weather forecasts – all of which usually turned out to be inaccurate!

Given the uncertainty of the weather and other factors, the North Yorkshire activations were curtailed to only one – G/TW-001 Urra Moor (Round Hill). Gisborough Moor will have to wait for another visit, to complete activation of all of the Tees to Wash region SOTA summits.

As mentioned earlier the activation of TW-001 was aborted last year, due to lack of time. For this activation at least the route to Clay Bank car park was known and the drive there was uneventful. Upon arriving it only took a couple of minutes to throw on the rucksack with all radio equipment in it, and we were off, heading back down the road to where the Cleveland Way crosses the road where we take the track to the left going up the hill (note there are other tracks that start near this car park – make sure you get the one signposted as the Cleveland Way. If you are not on a path made of stones, you are on the wrong path). The path climbs steeply and when you reach the top of the first climb you are still a long way from the destination. There follows a long section over relatively flat moorland with grouse and sheep on it and then you start another climb up to the highest point in the North Yorkshire Moors – all the way you follow the main path, the Cleveland Way. The journey up took almost exactly an hour with the return journey only being about 5 minutes less.

The trig point itself is about 2-3 metres higher than surrounding land on what appears to be an artificial mound. There is no obvious way to support at mast directly at the trig point, so I set up using the convenient (and sturdy) signpost at hunters crossing, running the two ends of the dipole off and down the ground in clear spots in the brush, so avoiding impacting the path for other walkers.

Once on the moorland, while it was not raining, there was a bitterly cold wind. I would say it was probably 2-3 degrees but with windchill it was definitely at or below zero degrees. Indeed on the way up parts of the track were iced over and there was some patches of snow still on the ground. This again was to be an activation where I would look to make the needed contacts, plus anyone waiting and then pack up. In fact I started off with a non-SOTA contact with John in Norfolk simply as he was putting such a strong signal into Urra Moor. Sometimes it’s nice to have a “normal” contact before spotting and as my brother said he was getting no cell phone signal, I might have had to seek out “normal” contacts to make up the needed four. While my brother was right, that Vodafone had no coverage, BT had a healthy signal (this is exactly why I have a dual-SIM phone) and I was able to self spot and the contacts came sreadily in. I did try an S2S contact but it seems my 5w was too weak to be heard by the other activator, despite other chasers telling the activator to listen for the S2S.

After about 40 minutes on the summit, it was time to pack up and head back down the hill, into the car and off for a late lunch at a cafe we know. By the evening, we were glad that we hadn’t tried to fit Guisborough Moor in as well, it would have been too much in the weather. It can be a nice activation for later in the year when the sun is shining!

Photos:

G/TW-005 Normanby Top.

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G/TW-001 Urra Moor (Round Hill).

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Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

Spiderbeam Aerial-51 UL-404 off centre fed dipole.

5 metre squid pole.

Logs:

G/TW-005 Normanby Top.

G/TW-001 Urra Moor (Round Hill).

Conclusions:

Weather forecasts are becoming less and less reliable. Do not plan on weather predictions without being able to change plans constantly when (not if) they change!

73 ’til the next Summit!

DD5LP/P – February 5th. 2016 – 5 Summits in a day.

Posted on 09/02/2016 by VK2JI DD5LP G8GLM

Preparation:

The 10m/6m challenge finishes on February 13th. 2016 and I wanted to pack in some more 10m summit activations before it ended. Without travelling to a different country (e.g. Austria), an activation on 6m is not possible as portable 6m operation is illegal in Germany. I have already tried going to two Austrian summits and was unable to get even one 6m contact on either of them, so I decided to look at any local summits where I have not been able to get a 10m contact from during either of the two halves of the challenge.

I activated DL/AM-001 Peissenberg on January 26th, again with no 10m contacts, so I wanted to try that summit again – it is also one of the closest and easiest summits for me to get to. As propagation on 10 metres was absolutely horrible, I alerted the local amateurs to my activation plans in the hope that I could at least manage one ground wave / line of sight contact on 10m.

The other local summits that I had not activated on 10m in the challenge period so far, were DL/AM-178 Ammerleite (tried in December again without success), DL/AM-177 Kirnberg, DL/AL-169 Auerberg and DL/AL-179 Weichberg. Making five summits in all – with the drives between these summits and the walking times from where I will be parking my car, this will take a complete day.

With mixed weather, there was the real possibility that one or more of the summits may not be accessible. In this case I would try to activate it/them the following week.

As some of the summits required a fair walk, I took the small radio kit, but also packed the larger kit in the car in case I decided I needed it.

The Locations:

Peissenberg – DL/AM-001

About 45 minutes from home and a logical first summit for the loop of activations. This summit I last activated on January 26th 2016, and hence would not gain any activator or activator bonus points, but perhaps a 10m contact.

Ammerleite – DL/AM-178

About 30 minutes drive from Peissenberg but then with a 20 minute climb to the summit.This summit I last activated on December 31st 2015 and hence would be able to gain both activator and winter bonus points along with another 10m summit point if all went well.

Kirnberg – DL/AM-177

About 20 minutes drive from Böbing where I park the car for Ammerleite. I have not activated this summit this year so as well as the hoped for 10m multiplier point in the challenge, I should be able to get the summit activator point as well as the 3 winter bonus points.

Auerberg DL/AL-169

The trip over into the Allgäu region takes a while from Kirnberg, around 45-50 minutes. Like Kirnberg as I have not activated this summit this year as well as the hoped for 10m multiplier point in the challenge, I should be able to get two summit activator points as well as the 3 winter bonus points.

Weichberg DL/AL-179.

Just up the road from Auerberg, this is the shortest drive between the summits about 15-20 minutes and again I have not activated this summit this year so as well as the hoped for 10m multiplier point in the challenge, I should be able to get the one summit activator point as well as the 3 winter bonus points if all goes well.

So there’s the plan – 5 summits, all of which I have activated before and hence know the best approach to each of them. A possibility of earning 5 10m challenge summit multiplier points, 5 activator points and 12 winter bonus points.

The Activation:

The planned day was on and then off a couple of times as the weather forecast kept changing. Friday the 5th. of February I set off expecting some rain showers but nothing much and that the snow would have gone from most of the summits. This turned out not to be true. The rain never came, but the snow was still there at all summits making access to Ammerleite, Kirnberg and Weichberg particularly difficult when climbing through snow drifts and sliding on wet, slushy ground.

Peissenberg, the first summit turned out to be horribly cold and after getting just one contact with Robert DJ2MKR (a local station to me here) on 10m using the loaded vertical on a tripod, I packed up while I still had some feeling in my fingers. If the weather was to stay as cold as this, it was going to be a difficult day! I also was not happy with the SWR from the vertical and so decided to use the usual 5m fibreglass pole and Spiderbeams OCF antenna on all following summits, even taking the 40m/20m amplifier and its batteries with me as well (but never using it).

The next summit was Ammerleite or rather Schnalz as the actual summit is called. I used the longer (official) access route following the closure of the road to the easier access point last year. After parking I picked up the two bags that contain the larger radio configuration and set off up the track. This is quite a steep ascent up a forestry track which in parts was like a river and in other parts very slippery. The final approach to the summit is across two fields which were still partly covered by snow drifts, making the ascent “interesting” as I was certainly the first person up this “track” since the snow had fallen. Once on the summit, setting up took a little longer than normal, this time not because of the cold but rather because of high winds. In any case once set-up, I was able again to get a contact with Robert on 10 metres (but with no one else). I then changed to the zoo that is 40m and made another 13 contacts before packing up. Although the short activation at Peissenberg had put me ahead of schedule the extra ascent time through the snow to Ammerleite had lost that time and I knew I would have to take the descent slower than I would like, so I was concerned not to lose any more time.

Once I was back at the car and had warmed up a little, I checked my route to Kirnberg and set off, eating a sandwich en-route. The distance from the parking spot to the summit at Kirnberg is not far but again, it was made difficult by the still laying snow as was the erection of the dipole antenna when I reached the summit. While Peissenberg had been very cold and Ammerleite very windy, Kirnberg turned out to be both very cold and very windy, with the result that I was eager to get the activation done and get on with the long drive over to Auerberg as soon as I could. Once again Robert on 10m was the first in the log but despite several calls I was unable to find anyone else on 10m. Rather than the zoo on 40m, I decided to try 20m this time to pick up the needed extra 3 contacts. In fact I got 8 more contacts before the chasers ran out, so I packed up again and slid my way back down to the car.

The trip from Kirnberg to Auerberg took a little longer than planned as I missed a turn off and only when I realised this when I saw I was approaching a different SOTA summit (DL/AL-170 Zweisselberg). So I had to turn around and back-track until I found a way through to the road that I should have been on. I had hoped that the Panorama Restaurant at Auerberg may have been open, so I could have got a warm drink, but unfortunately it wasn’t. It’s probably not worth them opening except at weekends at this time of year. Once I was set up behind the church on the summit, reliable Robert was there again on 10m for me but this time I also managed a contact with Michael DJ5AV near Lake Constance on 10m aswell. I saw that there were a few other activators on while I was at Auerberg and managed an S2S contact with Hans DL/PA3FYG/P but with the other three activators I called, I simply could not get through the pile-ups to them with just my 5w (with cold fingers, I didn’t try to install the amplifier to give me 25w instead of 5w and even with that boost I may not have been able to “break the pile-up”). I worked a total of 25 other 40m contacts from Auerberg in about 50 minutes. At this point, I was running behind schedule, so it was time to shut down and pack up again and see if indeed I could manage all 5 planned summits in the day and get home at a reasonable time.

Auerberg to Weichberg was probably the shortest drive of the day at about 15 minutes. The parking spot for Weichberg is not normally a long walk from the summit, but in this case no one had used the track up the hillside and I had to “break the track” through the snow to mark the way up to the chapel on the summit. The 4 or 5 people who came up while I was operating probably appreciated my marking the track – on the way down it was a lot clearer and easier to negotiate as it had been used more. Weichberg would have been a good summit to use the vertical on a tripod from as there is only limited places to install the fibreglass squidpole but as I had left the vertical in the car, I was not going to go down to get it and so the dipole went up as best it could. One call on 10m and there was Robert, reporting this was the weakest he had heard me but I still broke over the top of some S5-S7 noise he was having on 10m from some local installation. Apart from Robert, I worked a further 7 stations on 20m, with some weak reports. It was only after getting home that I realised that the FT-817 had switched down to 2.5w output from its maximum 5w due to the battery voltage dropping. I had a spare (charged) battery with me however on Weichberg, I just wanted to bag as many chasers as could hear me and then pack up and head home to a warm bath tub! So it was after 25 minutes of operating on Weichberg, I packed up for a last time, happy with the fact that I had managed to activate all 5 summits but glad it was over. The state of the paths and the fact that there was still quite a lot of snow around had surprised me as all snow at home had gone some days before.

Photos:

DL/AM-001 Peissenberg.

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DL/AM-178 Ammerleite.

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DL/AM-177 Kirnberg.

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DL/AL-169 Auerberg.

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DL/AL-179 Weichberg.

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Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

Diamond RHM-8B on tripod (used on Peissenberg only)

Spiderbeam Aerial-51 UL-404 off centre fed dipole on 5 metre squid pole (all other locations).

Log:

DL/AM-001 Peissenberg.

DL/AM-178 Ammerleite.

DL/AM-177 Kirnberg.

DL/AL-169 Auerberg.

DL/AL-179 Weichberg.

Conclusions:

At this time of year, fives summits in one day is probably the most I could have achieved. In summer 7 may be possible as I drove past one summit (Rentschen) which I had already activated on 10m and activated this year and so would get no points for it and the DL/AL-170 Zweisselberg summit that I almost reached by mistake would probably also be a possible seventh candidate!

73 ’til the next summit! ….. or summits?