AL-171 – Eisenberg.

Posted on 25/03/2022 by VK2JI DD5LP G8GLM

Background – Double summit.

Some of you may recognise the name of this summit from my previous reports. Eisenberg is a current SOTA and a current HEMA summit. How can this happen? Well HEMA strictly adheres to its rule of including only summits with a prominence greater than 100 metres and less than 150 metres. For historical reasons, SOTA summits are not always over the SOTA rule of a minimum of 150m prominence.

Preparation:

This activation was planned to be a little after the normal time for our twice-weekly “Comms Testers net” on 14.242 MHz which normally runs from 0745-0815 UTC on Monday & Thursday mornings, because of the somewhat longer distance to this summit.

Ernie VK3DET had promised to wait until I got on the air and Mike 2E0YYY would listen from the UK and we would use Signal as the “back-channel”.

Eisenberg has popular castle ruins on top of it and in fact, the wooden platform within the ruins is where I always set up. One big advantage to Eisenberg is the mountain restaurant where I would park my car and head there for a beer after completing the activation. It has a great view out over the valley. I avoid this summit on weekends because of the tourists but weekdays are fine (except Monday when the restaurant is closed).

The climb from the restaurant car park to the castle is steep and in winter very slippery. I have needed to fit spikes to get up the ice-covered path in the past but that certainly should not be needed on this activation, with a dry sunny and reasonable warm day forecast.

As usual for early starts, I loaded the car Wednesday evening with all but my food and water so that all would be ready for a 7 am (0600 UTC) start the following morning.

The Activation

I knew there was one part of my route closed (and has been closed now for 6 months while the complete road is renewed for about 5 miles through Seeg – I know the diversion well for this and it adds hardly any time to the trip. What surprised me though was the total closure of the major east-west route including some newly constructed parts of the road on the way to Markt-Obersdorf. It looked like cars were coming through from the other side, so the return journey should be fine (or so I thought). The signposted diversion in fact took me past 4 SOTA summits, all of which I could have easily diverted to but I wanted to activate Eisenberg, so I pressed on. Actually arriving about 20 minutes earlier than I had expected at the restaurant’s car park! I had not been driving any faster than allowed either, while this was the one day in the year that all of the speed traps in Bavaria are set up, especially on the country roads. The police chiefs say this teaches the drivers to slow down but an investigation looking at data from the last 5 years of these actions, carried out by Passau University, found that car drivers ONLY slowed down on this one day and increased speed the following day again. This is purely a money-raising action for the local governments.

On arrival, at the car park, it was still a little chilly but not nearly as cold as it has been over the last few weeks. It looks like we might have spring arriving after all!

The “trudge” up to the castle took the usual about 20 minutes and I found the place deserted. While setting up the antenna and radio, I got an inquiry from Ernie asking how long I was going to be and a few minutes later, he came straight back to my 20m 20w SSB CQ call on our net frequency. We exchanged 53/54 reports and I tried to explain to Ernie that this summit has two codes, one for HEMA and one for SOTA. During my conversation, I noticed what I at first thought was some idiot causing deliberate QRM by playing music on the frequency but later I realised it was over a larger section of the band and I now believe it was the third harmonic of one of the high powered Shortwave broadcast stations that have been re-started to send propaganda into both sites of the Ukraine-Russia conflict. Someone at the stations needs to put a spectrum analyser on the transmitter’s output!

The next surprise was that my radio turned off without warning! Right in the middle of one of my overs with Ernie. I had been running on my 10AH battery box but I also carry a spare supply in the firm of a LiHV battery and when I got that out and connected up, I was working again but with less battery capacity available, so I would not be able to stay as long as I had hoped.

After I had worked Ernie, Mike 2E0YYY kindly spotted me first on HEMA and later on SOTA but today instead of the usual pile of callers, it took a while to gather enough to qualify the summit! Even after switching from 20m to 40m, I was not getting many calls and while Mike reported that I had a “booming signal” into the North of the UK, the only two contacts I made on 40m were into the southwest of England with low signal strengths in both directions. The bands were definitely strange. I thought perhaps there was a break in one of the links in the 40m section of the dipole so I tested it when I got home and it was fine. It was band conditions at the time that I was on that were strange.

My 20m contacts were mainly into Sweden and Finland to the North and Greece and Portugal to the south, suggesting the band was “long”.

In any case after the troubles finding contacts (I ended up with thirteen which is more than enough to qualify the summit but a lot less than I would normally get) and seeing the LiHV battery voltage dropping, I decided it was time to pack up and head back down the hill, arriving at the restaurant a few minutes after they opened and I was able to relax looking out over the valley in the sunshine and drinking a lovely weissbier.

The trip home was not as easy as I had hoped. I headed back using my normal route only to find the main B472 road was indeed completely closed in both directions and the diversion from Markt Oberdorf had obviously been worked out for large trucks as it added over 30 minutes to my journey by avoiding taking me up the small roads that would have reduced the journey time, not only because it would have been a shorter route but also I would have avoided being stuck behind slow-moving trucks, that on this “Speed-trap-day”, had the added danger of a speeding fine while overtaking.

Photos:

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Equipment used:

Mountaintop travelling 40-litre rucksack.
Bothy bag (emergency shelter) (not used).
Xiegu G90.
Komunica Power HF-Pro2-PLUS-T loaded vertical antenna. (not used)
Modified mini photo tripod with clip-on radials (not used)
Lamdahalbe 6m mini-mast.
SotaBeams linked dipole.
Battery box (2 x 5000maH hard-case 4S LIPOs). (failed)
4000maH LiHV battery.
Painters thick plastic sheet.
Lightweight headphones.
Smartphone to spot and for back-channel comms.

Logs:

HEMA

SOTA

Conclusions:

The weather is getting better – I needed no gloves while operating this time.
It was a pleasure to get an immediate contact with Ernie, which probably would not have been possible from home. The lower noise level when operating portable is a great advantage.
I checked the dipole when I got home and found no breaks – this must just have been radio conditions or obstructions causing the problems.
The failure in the battery box turned out to be a simple broken wire, which must have been breaking over a long time through being plugged and unplugged and over time, breaking a strand at a time and then the final strand not being able to handle the current burning through (picture in the slideshow above).

73 ’til the next summit, be it HEMA or SOTA – or perhaps BOTH again?

DD5LP/P – March 14th 2022 – HEMA – DL/HAM-014 & SOTA DL/AM-176 – Rentschen.

Posted on 14/03/2022 by VK2JI DD5LP G8GLM

Background – Double summit.

Some of you may recognise the name of this summit from my previous reports. Rentschen is a current SOTA and a current HEMA summit. How can this happen? Well HEMA strictly adheres to its rule of including only summits with a prominence greater than 100 metres and less than 150 metres. For historical reasons, SOTA summits are not always over the SOTA rule of a minimum of 150m prominence.

Preparation:

This activation was planned to coincide with our twice-weekly “Comms Testers net” on 14.242 MHz which runs from 0745-0815 UTC on Monday & Thursday mornings.

This net was formed out of a Signal messenger group and several years of attempts to make contact on SSB between Europe/UK and the state of Victoria in Australia. Those in the group and hence net normally are Ernie VK3DET, Ian VK3YFD, Mike 2E0YYY and myself. This net has only been formally running a couple of weeks as I write this report and it was created as an “attend if you have time” net but to give a point to start from for further communications tests.

Rentschen is a flat plateau with a road running across it, this makes this the ideal summit if multiple pieces need to be carried for testing and this was going to be the case for this activation. While I could have simply taken the same set-up as I had used on the previous two activations, I wanted to test out an antenna that I had built some time ago and because of the Covid pandemic had not been able to give a proper test on a summit. Now was my chance. the weather would not be as cold as it had been, no rain was forecast and so the 20m VP2E antenna (description here) would get its test on this activation. I was particularly interested as to whether what looks like a double-sized off-centre fed dipole would give the promised gain in the direction that I set it up in (pointing via the long path to Australia).

To support the VP2E only one of my 6m fibreglass poles would be needed however, I decided to take the architect’s tripod and my 10m mast along as well. I might put up both the linked dipole and the VP2E for comparisons in the EU-VK path. The 6-metre fibreglass mast would use the sun umbrella screw-in base as its support.

As usual for early starts, I loaded the car Sunday evening with all but my food and water so that all would be ready for a 7 am (0600 UTC) start the following morning.

The Activation

Although Google Maps suggested accessing Rentschen from the north, rather than through Wildsteig to the south would be almost 10 minutes quicker, after looking at a satellite image of the suggested route and seeing that it was a mud track rather than a normal road, I decided to take my normal approach route. I had enough time in any case.

The trip to the car parking spot for the summit took around 45 minutes from my home as there was limited traffic.

On arrival, it was not particularly warm and I was happy to have put my Parka on! I did a quick check of my usual set-up spot to find that the farmer had churned it up with his tractor recently, so I took a spot at the other side of the small track that runs from the road to the trig point.

I decided to initially set up the VP2E antenna as it was the one I wanted to test. Once that was up, I would go back to the car and bring the tripos and 10m mast for the linked dipole.

As I put down my painter’s sheet that I use on the ground, I received a message from Ernie and Ian, saying that they had a major thunderstorm coming through and they would have to disconnect all antennas and certainly would not be able to listen for me until the storms passed. Oh well “best-laid plans” and all that. There will be another opportunity I am sure.

I decided that as I had almost completed installing the VP2E antenna, I would continue to activate the summit with that antenna and Mike 2E0YYY would listen for me from the UK. The 20m band started long and then went short skip later but for the first hour or so, I could hear ZL1, VK2, VK5 & VK6 stations at or near S9 signal strength. Unfortunately, they were either in nets, calling an EU (usually EA) station or the pile-up to call them was horrendous!

Mike kindly spotted me on the DX Cluster and the HEMA website but to little avail. Eventually, as I was considering pulling the antenna down and putting up the dipole Lars SA4BLM called me and then after tuning around, I found Keith LZ4DJ who I had worked the previous Monday from the Berndorfer Buchet summit. After this, however, despite searching and calling, I was not getting any contacts on 20m. The band had closed it seems. Mike suggested I try 40m as he was sure there would be HEMA and SOTA chasers looking for me there. I was then faced with taking down one antenna and putting the linked dipole up on the same mast or going back to the car and bringing the tripod and 10m mast. Both options were not very inviting as with an icy cold breeze, the summit was not very warm.

Knowing that the G90 has an internal matching unit that could match the proverbial piece of wet string, I decided to try the 20m VP2E on 40m. The result? Receive is fine but transmit is terrible as regards putting a signal out. Despite that 10 SOTA/HEMA chasers worked hard and I got them into the log.

Lots of lessons were learnt from this activation, despite having to change plans around.

Photos:

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Equipment used:

Mountaintop travelling 40-litre rucksack.
Xiegu G90.
Komunica Power HF-Pro2-PLUS-T loaded vertical antenna. (not used)
Modified mini photo tripod with clip-on radials (not used)
Lamdahalbe 6m mini-mast.
Screw-in sun umbrella support.
VP2E 20m antenna.
Surveyors tripod with 10m mast (not used).
SotaBeams linked dipole (not used).
Battery box (2 x 5000maH hard-case 4S LIPOs).
4000maH LiHV battery (not used).
Painters thick plastic sheet.
Lightweight headphones.
Smartphone to spot and for back-channel comms.

Logs:

HEMA

SOTA

Conclusions:

The weather although bright was not as warm as it looked!
It was a shame that Ernie & Ian could not make the Net, but safety first and trying to work DX with a storm around you is not only dangerous but also quite futile with all the electrical noise that a storm produces.
I need to put the VP2E 20m antenna up in the garden and check that it has not gone off-resonance since it was built.
The plastic (one-use) medical gloves that I took with me do not keep the hands warm enough. The cloth version is better for this but the plastic ones allowed me to use the smartphone’s touch screen where the cloth ones do not.
SURPRISE! – I hadn’t realised but until the end of March, Rentschen gets 3 winter bonus points in the SOTA award scheme.

73 ’til the next summit, be it HEMA or SOTA – or perhaps BOTH again?

DD5LP/P – March 12th 2022 – HEMA – DL/HCN-015 & SOTA DL/BE-094 – Irschenhausen.

Posted on 13/03/2022 by VK2JI DD5LP G8GLM

Background – Double summit.

Some of you may recognise the name of this summit from my previous reports. Irschenhausen is a current SOTA and a current HEMA summit. How can this happen? Well HEMA strictly adheres to its rule of including only summits with a prominence greater than 100 metres and less than 150 metres. For historical reasons, SOTA summits are not always over the SOTA rule of a minimum of 150m prominence.

Preparation:

This activation was planned to coincide with Rob G7LAS being on a HEMA summit in England so that we could make the first H2H contact between DL and G HEMA associations. Luckily unlike other activations, this was aiming for a contact at a respectable time of 1 pm local (1200 UTC).

I originally had chosen a different summit however as this looked like being a sunny day and was a Saturday, I decided to avoid any place with lots of people. With the new COVID infections figure the day before the activation over 260,000 in Germany the risk of catching COVID despite the fact that I am fully vaccinated was simply too high.

As I activate Irschenhausen once a year for SOTA I know the summit well and chose that as my summit while it is a deserted, safe summit.

The equipment to be used would be the same as used the previous week as I used for Berndorfer Buchet. Irschenhausen, like Berndorfer Buchet, is a forested summit with a 15-20 minute walk-in, so just one rucksack with the 6-metre fibreglass mast and the sun umbrella screw-in base.

The weather promised to be better and by noon, it should be warm enough, but I decided to cover my options with a thin and thick jacket that I could choose from when leaving the car.

The Activation

The trip to the car parking spot for the summit took around 45 minutes from my home as there was limited traffic. In contrast, the return trip took a full hour.

On arrival, it was indeed warm enough to go with the thin jacket and I loaded up ready for the walk. At this point, a farmer came by with his tractor and a log trailer. This didn’t sound any bells for me, however, it seems the local farmers were taking advantage of the improved weather to get their trees felled and transported. I set off up my well-known route through the forest but as I arrived up the last small track to the summit, it was blocked by another tractor. At first, I thought this was strange but could not see anyone nearby, so I pushed through the brush and up to the summit. It wasn’t long before I heard a chain saw in use though. This farmer had decided today was a good day to harvest the trees of the summit!

This was not going to be a good area to set up my station with the possibility of having a tree dropped on me!

Luckily, there are plenty of other areas that are in the activation zone and soon, I found an alternative spot, closer to the main track that was well in the AZ. I even found a marker stone there – at first I wondered if this could be the summits trig-point stone but I think it was simply marking the border between two parts of the forest.

Despite the changed location, I was still in good time for my 1200 UTC sked and had my linked dipole set up on 40m and the station was ready to go in about 15 minutes. It’s so much easier when doing this in plus rather than minutes 10°C! Following a recent CME hit to the ionosphere, 40m was very noisy and I started to wonder if the contact into the UK was going to be possible. As I was early, I decided to simply put out a CQ and ended up with two quite long rag-chews with some Austrian and German hams. As this summit is in both the SOTA and HEMA schemes I was watching both spotting pages from my phone and when I saw Rudi OE7RDI who was visiting Germany on a SOTA summit, not more than 15 minutes drive away from me, I gave him a call and we had my first S2S contact of the day. This was difficult though with 52 / 53 reports exchanged – an indication of how bad the band was.

Karl 2E0FEH was next in the log, responding to my “CQ HEMA” call, but again, I only got a 33 report from him. At this point, it was 1200 UTC and I had not seen any spot from Rob, so I sent him a message via the Internet to which I got a surprising response! He had got to his summit and the field where the summit is was filled with a herd of bulls! There was no alternate location in his case and so the planned H2H could not take place. He was going to go to another summit but it would take longer than I was able to wait, so that first H2H between DL and G in HEMA will have to wait for another day.

After 1200 UTC, the band quickly improved and rather than packing up, I decided to go SOTA S2S hunting and worked a row of other SOTA activators on their frequencies around 40m. At the end of the day, I was to have ten S2S contacts in the log. While skipping between calling the other activators, I called for both HEMA and then later SOTA chasers – spotting myself in the appropriate systems to give the chasers a chance to get a contact with this summit. I had a total of 34 contacts from the summit.

One could also say I had an eyeball QSO as well. While in conversation with another ham with my headphones on, I suddenly felt something next to me and it was a young medium-sized dog who had come over from the main track to see what I was doing! I looked around and there was a large family group walking down the main track, so I sent their dog back to them and then tried to explain to the other ham why I hadn’t come back to his last over!

Photos:

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Equipment used:

Mountaintop travelling 40-litre rucksack.
Xiegu G90.
Komunica Power HF-Pro2-PLUS-T loaded vertical antenna. (not used)
Modified mini photo tripod with clip-on radials (not used)
Lamdahalbe 6m mini-mast.
Screw-in sun umbrella support.
SotaBeams linked dipole.
Battery box (2 x 5000maH hard-case 4S LIPOs).
4000maH LiHV battery (not used).
Painters thick plastic sheet.
Lightweight headphones.
Smartphone to spot and for back-channel comms.

Logs:

HEMA

SOTA

Conclusions:

The weather was lovely for a change.
It was a shame that Rob and I could not make the H2H as the time is running out for this first H2H contact as it has to be done in the first year of the new association and the DL association started in April 2021.
Once again with the equipment – everything worked as it should including the Xiegu G90 radio which continues to perform well, despite mediocre conditions on 40m at the start of the activation.

73 ’til the next summit, be it HEMA or SOTA – or perhaps BOTH again?

DD5LP/P – March 7th 2022 – HEMA – DL/HCN-004 & SOTA DL/AM-180 – Berndorfer Buchet.

Posted on 08/03/2022 by VK2JI DD5LP G8GLM

Background – Double summit.

Some of you may recognise the name of this summit from my previous reports. Berndorfer Buchet is a current SOTA and a current HEMA summit. How can this happen? Well HEMA strictly adheres to its rule of including only summits with a prominence greater than 100 metres and less than 150 metres. For historical reasons, SOTA summits are not always over the SOTA rule of a minimum of 150m prominence.

Preparation:

This activation would be the first activation of a summit in the HEMA Southern Bavaria Central region and I wanted to get out to see what conditions were like portable into VK, early morning (around 0800 UTC). While a group of us had been making contact from home around this time, I seemed to be getting a far better report from Ernie VK3DET, than I was giving him. I have checked antennas and equipment and we are both running about the same power level. Ernie has a 3 element beam and I am only using a wire sky-loop antenna but none of this really explained the difference. I had also looked into whether the use of different antenna types, could cause the angle of incidence to the Ionosphere to be different and hence change the skip distance and coverage area at each end. Perhaps man-made noise levels could be the cause? The portable operation would be another research action. If I were to be able to work Ernie, this would be with an even simpler dipole antenna not far off the ground sending signals to Ernie’s 20m Yagi beam.

The weather had been extremely cold of late and was staying that way, so the early start needed for the radio window to Australia would be a test of my fortitude as well as a test for the equipment!

As usual, I packed the one rucksack full of equipment into the back of the car the night before the activation, so I could get an early start.

The Activation

The trip to the car parking spot for the summit was uneventful. It took around 35 minutes from my home.

On arrival, I could see that a lot of tree-felling had been done and the logs were pilled up ready for collection. Unfortunately, the track that I walked up to the summit was quite a mess, hopefully, the forestry people will repair it after they take the wood out. I had packed my screw-in sun-umbrella base on the side of the rucksack and this was the first thing to be unpacked on the summit. I screwed it into the same old tree trunk remains that I have used for the last five years. Next was the 6-metre fibreglass mast and linked dipole, with the links set for 20m as I had planned to only operate on 20m so that I would not need to be on the summit longer than needed.

Sending a quick note via the Signal app, which serves as our “back-channel” when we test, Ernie was there straight away in response to my CQ call. We exchanged 58 / 56 reports for this 24,000 km / 15,000 mile SSB contact via long path. The 13 dB difference in power levels (I was using 20w, Ernie 400w) matches the 2-S point difference in reported signals. So this seems to confirm the point about the received noise level causing the imbalance in reports from the home location. After Ernie, I worked Keith, an ex-Pat Brit living in Bulgaria with the call LZ4DJ and Christos SV2OXS from Greece. Although spotted on the HEMA & DX Clusters I received no calls from the UK and Mike 2E0YYY using the Hack Green SDR could not hear me at all. The 20m band was obviously “running long” as normally I would get calls from the UK. I hadn’t planned to, but as I was still missing one contact to qualify the summit, I took the antenna down and switched the links to 40m where I bagged another three contacts reasonably easily.

The over-bearing problem on this activation was not the equipment, nor the propagation but rather the weather. When I decided to go QRT at 0900 UTC it was still minus 3 degrees centigrade and there was an icy wind starting. In these conditions, the best action is to close down and head back to the car, which I did.

Photos:

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Equipment used:

Mountaintop travelling 40-litre rucksack.
Xiegu G90.
Komunica Power HF-Pro2-PLUS-T loaded vertical antenna. (not used)
Modified mini photo tripod with clip-on radials (not used)
Lamdahalbe 6m mini-mast.
Screw-in sun umbrella support.
SotaBeams linked dipole.
Battery box (2 x 5000maH hard-case 4S LIPOs).
4000maH LiHV battery (not used).
Painters thick plastic sheet.
Lightweight headphones.
Smartphone to spot and back-channel comms.

Logs:

HEMA

SOTA

Conclusions:

The weather was on the borderline of dangerously cold and if this hadn’t been a summit that I know well, I may well have cancelled. Learning – know your limits and be prepared to shut down and go home earlier than planned.
It does seem that the reason that I can not give Ernie as good a report at my home station as he gives me, is the local noise level. Ernie is out on a farm where I live in a modern village. So electrical QRM is likely to get worse rather than better!
I was really happy with the contact with Ernie VK3DET – it just shows what a portable location can provide if you are there at the right time, even with low power.
No comments on the equipment – everything worked as it should including the Xiegu G90 radio which continues to perform well, especially on receive.

73 ’til the next summit, be it HEMA or SOTA – or perhaps BOTH again?

DD5LP/P – December 20th 2021 – DL/AM-001 Peissenberg.

Posted on 20/12/2021 by VK2JI DD5LP G8GLM

Preparation:

As I hadn’t activated a summit recently, the radio conditions appear to be getting better and the threat of new COVID lockdowns is getting ever closer. I decided to activate one of my closest and simplest to get to summits – Piessenberg. I have already activated Peissenberg this year and hence won’t give me any additional activator points, not even winter bonus points, but for a quick activation it is a drive-up summit, and it’s a summit that I can get to early in the morning (to take advantage of Greyline or Long Path contacts into ZL/VK).

I decided to take the reliable Xiegu G90 and linked dipole combination but with the 10m mast and the surveyors tripod to support it (of course, other options would be along in the car “just in case” there were any problems). The car was loaded the night before to allow an early departure, the plan was to be on the summit and operational by 0800 UTC or 9 am local time – which was around the time that the 20m-band has been opening to VK recently. The weather was another factor. This is winter in southern Bavaria and Monday was to be the warmest day of the week, with temperatures getting as HIGH as zero degrees! Between minus 9 and minus 6 was forecast for Tuesday and Wednesday.

The Activation

The trip down took nearer to 50 minutes rather than the expected 35 minutes, due to being stuck in a queue of traffic following a slow truck with a trailer which refused to travel at more than 60 km/h on the country roads where 100 is allowed. Peissenberg was reached therefore at 8 am (0700 UTC) and the first surprise was new signs in the previously free car park, stating that it is now privately owned (but still not very well maintained) and hence costs money to use. I paid my €2 for 3 hours although others who came and left seemed to ignore the signs and machine completely, so I don’t know how often it is checked, most likely at this time of year not at all but I did the right thing and paid.

Once I had parked, it’s only a few metres to the benches where I set up. The tripod, I set up with the 10m mast and linked dipole, I thought quite close but a couple of steps further and the coax wouldn’t have reached (it did, just).

Ernie VK3DET in Victoria Australia had agreed to listen for me and Mike 2E0YYY/P had headed out to a HEMA Summit in the UK, so we had a group of three of us. As it was too early for 20m to be open, I started on 40m and after a little tuning around, I found Ron ZL4RMF calling CQ from the south island of New Zealand not getting any replies. So I called him – hang on, no output – Oh dear, what is going on? Well, I have been testing using my Bluetooth headset and for that to work, the microphone audio has to be switched to the line input connector on the ACC socket. I had forgotten to switch it back. After a few attempts, I remembered what I had to press to get to the menu setting to change it back and then everything was fine again. By this time others had found Ron and were calling him. I threw my call in to have a try and Ivan (sorry I can’t remember his call, from Russia, said to Ron when he had finished his contact – there’s a portable station in Germany calling you – please take a listen for him (thanks to Ivan – that was very thoughtful and kind of you). So my first entry in the log was a 5 & 6 contact with New Zealand and a few words with Ron, who I hadn’t spoken to for a while. After working Ron, I realised the speech compressor had not been turned on (another change due to the BT headset tests) and I know that makes a difference, so I turned it on for the rest of the contacts.

I now found a free frequency and put out some CQ calls and was surprised to get calls back without even spotting myself. Mike had, had a delay as his antenna was reporting a bad VSWR reading on 40m and indeed when I did get to work him, he wasn’t as loud as usual. That could have been conditions but other UK stations were strong, so I think Mike must have had a bad contact in the antenna somewhere. Once we all switched to 20m, Mike was not so strong to start with plus he had S9 QRM across the whole of the 20m-band (we believe this could be from a timer/light level switched floodlight on a nearby building at Mow Cop as all interference disappeared later). As the band changed, Mike was so strong that there was no background noise when he spoke and the S-Meter was up around 10 dB over nine. He was like a local 2m FM station. Later again, he dropped to just above the noise within 30 seconds but this was radio conditions changing, not a faulty antenna. The 20m-Band was really variable during this period. I never managed to hear Ernie VK3DET although we tried several times. I did hear VK3XAT at about 3-3 at one point but he could not hear me. I think the extra “hop” needed on the long-path route for a VK signal to get to me rather than to the UK makes a lot of difference to the signal strength.

Photos:

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Equipment used:

Mountaintop travelling 40-litre rucksack.
Xiegu G90.
Surveyors Tripod and 10 metre DX-Wire fibreglass “mini-mast”.
SotaBeams linked dipole.
4000 maH LiHV battery
Battery box (2 x 5000maH hard-case 4S LIPOs).
Painters thick plastic sheet.
Lightweight headphones.

Log:

Conclusions:

Overall a successful activation with lots of good reports for the G90 – Linked dipole combination.
Greyline propagation into ZL is a reliable thing, especially when other hams help you get through the pile-up.
The equipment, even the smartphone, needs me to operate without gloves on far too often. In winter this is a risk as when operating alone, simply packing the gear away can be difficult with hands going purple with cold.

73 ’til the next summit.

DD5LP/P – October 20th 2021 – DL/AM-156 Schneidberg.

Posted on 21/10/2021 by VK2JI DD5LP G8GLM

Preparation:

Schneidberg (the SOTA one, not the HEMA Schnaidberg one) is a summit that is not too far away from home but I haven’t activated it for some time. The last time I went there it required fighting through the forest as the direct track had a gate on it and there were bulls in the field! This also requires a long walk from the nearest car parking spot, so a lot of time can be consumed for just 2 points. The days before this activation the bands had been great with openings to Australia, New Zealand and the Americas every morning. I wasn’t to know it but the conditions were about to take a dive, just as I could get out to a summit! In any case, based on what I thought would be good conditions, the radio kit was to include the good old linked dipole (albeit modified to cover 17 metres in place of 30 metres) which would also require at least the 6-metre LambdaHalbe Mast and a support – the screw-in sun umbrella base. The backpack was going to be heavy, so I looked at what I might possibly remove and the battery box, which contains two 5000 mAh 4S LIPO batteries and the electronics to reduce their 16.5v down to 13v came to mind as I now have my 4000 mAh LiHV 3S battery which is smaller, lighter and needs no voltage reduction circuit electronics. I had used this on my last activation, so now it was time to rely on it on its own. I also removed my SOTABeams end-fed wire, which while not very heavy did take up some space. Then I considered removing the HF-PRO-2-PLUS-T and its mini-tripod, all of which fits inside the rucksack and I decided not to as, without it, I would have no backup should anything happen to the linked dipole. A good decision as it turned out …

The removed items were put in a second rucksack which would travel in the car but not be taken to the summit unless something unforeseen were to happen. As I wished to hopefully take advantage of the morning grey-line propagation for some contacts into ZL, I would need an early rise and early start, so the car was loaded the night before, with just pack-up and water to be added to the rucksack on the day of the activation.

The Activation

I was awake before the alarm went off and on the road by 6:45 am local time (0445 UTC). On getting to the spot that I wanted to park at about an hour later, I double-checked that all that I intended taking was in my rucksack and the long walk started.

On walking up to where the gate had been closed a couple of years ago, I found it had gone, gateposts and everything. The reason appears to be that the small hut at the higher end of this field is being renovated – most likely to make a summer rental property. It looks like they have just put a new metal roof on it, but with all the wooden scaffolding still around it, the work looks like it’s far from finished.

Going up the track to the small house and then past it, I found the highest area before the forest where there is a plateau of sorts. This area is definitely within the activation zone and walking another km to increase my height by 15 vertical metres and be in the middle of the forest was not an attractive option. At this point, I found that the forestry commission has put in a new track through the forest just behind the flat grassy area – this is not marked on any maps yet as far as I can see, so it is very new.

Anyway, time to set up and see what I can hear…

As I was hoping for ZL/VK and Ian VK3YFD had kindly offered to listen for me, I decided the best chance would be with the linked-dipole on the 6-metre mast, so up it went and as it was still possible that contacts via Greyline could be possible I started on 40m. I even head Ron ZL4RMF, not as strong as usual but there at least. I tried a call – no response (not a surprise with the other mega kW stations calling him at the same time, but sometimes he picks me out of the pile). Ian told me that he couldn’t hear me on 40m, no surprise there, 20m is usually better with the gain of his beam and the long-path propagation. It was still a bit early though and the MUF was still under 14 MHz so I decided to spot myself on the SOTA cluster, put out a CQ and see what I could get in the log so that the summit would be qualified. The first station who came back to my call was Klaus DL6MST and while we made the contact, his report for me was not what I expected initially at 3-1 and then at best 5-2 where I was getting him 5-9. This was worrying. I checked for anything obvious on the coax connection to the rig (this had broken a couple of months ago, but that wasn’t the problem. I tried a few more calls and got no response – even with a bad 40m band, I normally get a small pile-up. Eventually, I made another contact, Eric F5LMH. By this time I had set up the backup antenna, the HF-PRO-2_PLUS-T on its little tripod and so could switch between the two antennas. Eric reported at least a 2 S-point better signal from the far lower loaded vertical to the inverted-V dipole. That is the opposite way round of what I would have expected. There is really something wrong with the linked dipole.

Time had marched on and so I decided to switch to 20 metres, initially with the loaded vertical and tried an arranged call with Ian VK3YFD. He could not hear me but I could hear him “Just”. I then had a thought, perhaps the problem on the dipole was only on 40 metres, so down came the mast to unlink both 20m links and …. one was ALREADY UNLINKED! No wonder the antenna wasn’t working as it normally does – it was set to 20m on one side and 40m on the other. This would have caused a bad SWR with my old X108G rig but as the G90 has an auto-ATU in it, it had matched the rig to the faulty antenna and hence I had a 1.3:1 VSWR showing – about normal.

I took out the remaining 20m link and put the mast back up to full height and asked Ian to call again. Now I could hear Ian on both antennas (but he could not hear me on either) – that was just bad radio conditions and it’s great that Ian stayed around to try. If anything he was a little stronger on the vertical than on the (operating correctly on 20m) linked dipole. This was a surprise but often it is said that a vertical is a better DX antenna because of its lower angle of radiation. I’ll have to compare the antennas again once I get out when the conditions are better.

I then completed four 20m QSOs in quick succession with 59 exchanges both ways. Although there was little on the band, I was getting out. The activation finished with a contact into Portugal with CT1DIZ 55 both ways and then it was time to pack up and head back down to the car as I was getting cold. The sun came out as I was halfway back to the car – typical!

Even when conditions are bad (as confirmed by several others on the day), you can learn from an activation. In this case, it’s perhaps to set up the radio without the ATU engaged first to check the antenna and only turn it on when needed. After all, an ATU in a rig connecting to an antenna via a length of coax will NEVER actually TUNE an antenna, it can only match the antenna. Directly connected antennas, like end-feds you can say the ATU in a radio tunes the antenna if it connects directly to the radio.

Photos:

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Equipment used:

Mountaintop travelling 40-litre rucksack.
Xiegu G90.
Komunica HF-PRO2-PLUS-T loaded vertical, photo tripod and radials.
SotaBeams linked dipole (modified for 17m).
LambdaHalbe 6-metre travel pole.
Sun umbrella screw-in base.
4000 mAh LiHV battery.
Painters thick plastic sheet.
Lightweight headphones.
LG Smartphone for spotting.

Log:

Conclusions:

Happily, the problem on the dipole was a simple error in physical configuration however it still needs to be tried on 17 metres.
The Komunica HF-PRO2-PLUS-T was great to have as a backup and got good reports. Once I have worked VK or ZL reliably using it I can remove the extra weight of the linked dipole and mast.
The LiHV battery worked again without issues and while it is a lot lighter and smaller than the battery box except on long activations I will most likely rely on this battery from now on.
You can never rely on good radio conditions staying long enough to get out and make DX contacts. You need to be lucky.

73 ’til the next summit.

DD5LP/P – October 8th 2021 – DL/AL-166 Zwoelferkopf “the 1000 point summit”.

Posted on 09/10/2021 by VK2JI DD5LP G8GLM

Preparation:

Zwoelferkopf is not a 1000 point summit, rather just a 4 point summit but as part of my push to get to the “magic 1000” activator points, I only had another 4 points to get. Weather has been variable and I have some commitments over the following days, so I decided I would go and activate this 4-point summit when I had the opportunity on Friday 8th October. I did not set an alert, in case I had to cancel for some reason. I know the summit but the last time that I activated it the conditions were very different with deep snow and fallen trees blocking the path in several positions. This time no snow but still one spot where the track was blocked.

In any case, I knew this was going to be a challenge but I had forgotten how long the trek to the summit takes and although I didn’t pack the complete kit in hindsight I should have taken less than I did.

The gear in the rucksack was the XIEGU G90, battery box and Komunica HF-PRO2 antenna (and photo tripod) but also the 6-metre mast and linked dipole (now changed to cover 40/20/17 instead of 40/30/20 metres). I had planned perhaps to test this change antenna on the summit. Also there, as it has been on the last few summits is the 4000mAh LiHV battery to be tested. Of course, my food and water also added to the weight of the rucksack but an addition for this trip – a thermos of hot chocolate was to be left in the car as a reward for getting back to the car and to warm me up a little.

I checked the alerts and had hoped to perhaps get an S2S with Phil G4OBK who was on holiday in Spain and Portugal but at the time I was on the summit, he was only on CW, not SSB.

As I only set off when a few tasks (including the morning dog walk) were completed at home, I would not be in time to get any contacts into VK or ZL but that was not the purpose of this activation. I just needed enough contacts to qualify the summit and get to the 1000 activator points.

The Activation

On arriving at the spot where I intended to park my car, it was quite muddy as some forestry equipment had been through and pulled up the ground leaving it very messy, so I had to park carefully to make sure I wasn’t bogged down when I wanted to leave. The path up to the summit is marked with what I call the Austrian flag but these are just the path markings (white horizontal line, red horizontal line, white horizontal line) these are not the border indicator, as we are also on the German/Austrian border here.

It took hardly any time at all for me to follow what was the (wrong) larger track, which then came to a dead-end and I had to climb back up to the correct track. So word to the wise – look for and follow those three colour markings on trees and stones and you won’t go far wrong. My excuse is that the mountain was in low cloud or mist for all of the time it took me to climb the track to the summit. At one point as I mentioned, there were two fallen trees across the track but I could duck under these without any problem and continue.

Following about 45-50 minutes of walking, I eventually came to the summit. I had forgotten how long this took but eventually, I was at the bench on the summit and I decided that with the track running directly over the summit, setting up the 6-metre mast and linked-Dipole could be an issue with other walkers passing by (in fact only a few came by but as I went back down later I passed over 15 people coming up the track – so my timing worked out quite well). The small photo-tripod, radial wires and the HF-PRO2 were erected in a small area of grass just off the track, next to the bench, where the tree cover would not block the vertical antenna. Looking in the SOTASpotter app, I saw a couple of other activators were out operating 20m SSB, so I decided to start on 20 metres and possibly switch to 40 metres later. As it happened, I spent very little time on 40 metres because I was getting very cold and my attempts of finding a free frequency were thwarted twice when a stronger station came up and simply blocked me out. We have a real problem with these LIDs in Europe. In any case, my first call was to one of the other activators – Thomas DC8TM/P on DM/BW-002 – a rather short skip for 20 metres but the contact was made and then I went off to find my own frequency and eight contacts followed in the next nine minutes. The key station who gave me my needed 4th contact was Christian F4WBN who has been a regular chaser for me over the last few weeks, from his home near the French/Spanish border – so you could say this was a B2B (Border to Border) contact with me sat exactly on the German/Austrian border. Before leaving 20 metres to try 40 metres, I managed another S2S contact, this time with F5UKL/P who was on F/PO-171. Rather than simply pack up and leave at this point, I adjusted the antenna for 40 metres switched bands on the radio and searched for a free frequency (7.090 the SOTA portable frequency was free) before self-spotting and calling. Horst DK1HKU came back to me for a contact but then as soon as we finished some other home station came up calling CQ without even checking the frequency. Tuning around, I simply could not find another free frequency. Rather than keep trying with little chance of success, I decided (as I was feeling very cold at this point), to simply call it a day and pack up and head back to the car.

The trip down the track took about half the time it had taken to come up despite having to stop to let those coming up the track get past me. On arriving back at the car, I had 40 minutes to wait until the road opened in a downward direction, so after some lunch, I checked emails and listened to the (broadcast) radio.

The trip home was uneventful, except that my wife had arranged a lovely surprise for me as she had bought a sweatshirt and had it printed to celebrate my Mountain Goat achievement. For the evening meal, there was a special homemade “SOTA Desert” as well.

Photos:

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Equipment used:

Mountaintop travelling 40-litre rucksack.
Xiegu G90.
Komunica HF-PRO2-PLUS-T loaded vertical, photo tripod and radials.
SotaBeams end-fed and linked dipole (both taken but not used).
LambdaHalbe 6-metre travel pole (taken but not used).
4000 mAh LiHV battery.
Battery box (2 x 5000maH hard-case 4S LIPOs) (not used).
Painters thick plastic sheet.
Lightweight headphones.
LG Smartphone for spotting.

Log:

Conclusions:

Once again the combination of the XIEGU G90 running its full 20 watts and the Komunica HF-PRO2-PLUS-T got good reports. So why did I take the extra weight of the other antenna and mast?
The LiHV battery worked without issues and is a lot lighter and smaller option than the battery box. This was a successful test and I can see myself using this in the future and leaving the battery box in the car as a backup.
I still need to test the modified linked dipole on 17, 20 & 40 metres.

73 ’til the next summit.

DD5LP/P – October 4th 2021 – DL/BE-093 Buchberg & DL/MF-082 Schwarzer Berg.

Posted on 05/10/2021 by VK2JI DD5LP G8GLM

Preparation:

I had originally planned to activate Buchberg and Zweisselberg but changed at the last minute as the weather forecast changed – and it is lucky that I did. After riding up on the open seat lift, it’s a good 45 minutes to the Zweisselberg summit with some of the way quite steep. The summit itself is open and offers no protection from the weather rather with its sun loungers, this is a summit to visit on a bright sunny, dry, day.

So the plans were changed the day before to be the two one-pointer, easy access summits of Buchberg and Schwarzer Berg and the trip reduced from a full (long) day to just over half a day.

As conditions have been good of late for contacts down into Australia around 0630-0730 UTC, I decided that is what I would try for from Buchberg and while I am at it, I will also try 17 metres as well as 20 metres as the propagation forecasts and reports are indicating that for EU-VK contacts, 17 metres should be also better than 20 metres. Another advantage of 17 metres of course is that contests are not allowed on the band meaning, once conditions do improve on the band it will be a band that can be used by low power portable operators on Saturdays and Sundays – something that, in Europe, neither 40 nor 20 metres are anymore.

As equipment, I decided to take the 10 metre DX-Wire mast, my surveyor’s tripod, as its support and my commercially made 17-metre vertical antenna from LambdaHalbe in Germany – it is effectively a J-Pole antenna, which needs the full 10m mast height to be deployed. I would of course also take the SOTABeams Band-Hopper linked dipole and try to put both antennas up on the same mast at the same time to make switching from 20 metres to 17 metres as quick as possible.

The Activation – Buchburg

After getting up before 6 am, I was on the road by 6:45 am (0445 UTC). The drive down took the expected 90 minutes despite a surprisingly high amount of traffic – I must have hit the time that the building and trades workers travel to work on a Monday morning. Half of the journey (which is completely on country roads) was driving behind other cars and trucks. We even came to a total halt for about 10 minutes in a small town called Weilheim, which is where several roads meet and where some road works were underway.

In any case, once I arrived at Buchberg, which is not far from the regional town of Bad Tölz, I found my usual parking space outside of the field where the cross and summit of Buchberg are located, collected up all my equipment and set off across the field, following a well-worn path that gets steep at the end. It was cold but I was hoping that as the sun came up, it would warm up (it didn’t). I had arranged with a couple of VK hams – Ernie VK3DET and Ian VK3YFD to do the tests on 20 & 17 metres. Mike, 2E0YYY who often is the lead to this little group, was sheltering at home in pouring rain but agreed to try and listen for me via his local web SDR receiver. In fact conditions the whole morning were not good between southern Germany and northern England and Mike never heard me on either 20 or 17 metres. I sent out a text via the “Signal” App telling them all that I was setting up. I had a major problem with the idea of having both antennas on the one mast at the same time, in that it bent over at the top to an alarming amount and I had to lower it to about 6 metres in height – which of course then meant that the lower part of the 17m J-pole was laid on the ground. In any case the plan was to start on 20 metres using the linked dipole.

On connecting up and tuning around, looking for a free frequency, I just caught the end of Paul VK5PAS talking to someone, so I waited on the frequency and he actually handed over to his partner, Marija VK5MAZ. I tried calling her several times in the next hour but without success as the multi-kilowatt Europe based stations with big towers and beams were fighting each other to work her. At the strength she was coming in, with a clear frequency I’m sure she would have been able to work me. Never mind… I kept looking and trying different frequencies only having to move on when some station close to the chosen frequencies splattered all over what I had listened on and found was not in use. Eventually, a sort-of-OK frequency was found, I put out a call and Ian VK3YFD came straight back to me. Ernie was having some local noise on that frequency, so we moved again, and this time, on the new frequency, Ernie VK3DET could join in as well.

Well, that’s not bad for 20w SSB and a dipole, two VK3 stations and levels of signals where we could have a normal conversation, not just exchange signal reports.

So now it was time to try 17 metres and even though half of the antenna was on the ground, there was Ian, stronger than he had been on 20 metres! The trouble was, he couldn’t hear me. So I decided to take the mast down, remove the dipole and put it back up only with the J-Pole antenna, to its full 10 metre height, so that the driven element was no longer on the ground. I tried with Ian again. He was as strong as ever, but he could hear nothing from me! The VSWR on the antenna was fine, it was now set-up OK – there was nothing for it – it simply doesn’t work for whatever reason! My next problem was to even get the single point for the SOTA summit, I needed two more contacts, so I put out calls on 17m in the hope that someone in Europe would be able to hear me – but no, nothing! This was starting to be a bit of a disaster but there was nothing for it, I had to lower the mast remove the J-Pole and put the linked-dipole back up and go back on 20m to get the needed contacts quickly as it was already time for me to head over to the next summit.

I managed 3 quick contacts following Mike spotting me on SOTAWatch again and then that was it. Time to pack everything up and head back down the field to the car with mixed feelings. It was great to get to talk on 20m with Ernie and Ian but the fact that the 17m J-pole receives (as well as VK, I could also hear JA stations with it) why wasn’t it transmitting?

The Activation – Schwarzer Berg

The trip from Buchberg to Schwarzer Berg took about 25 minutes and upon arrival at the parking spot, it was still as cold as it had been early morning but the skies were starting to look more threatening, despite the fact that the forecast said there would be no rain, I was starting to doubt that.

I decided not to bother with the big mast and tripod on this summit and just took the 6-metre one and the sun umbrella screw-in foot along with the radio equipment in the rucksack. At this point, I realised I could have tried with the HF-PRO-2 on 17 metres from the last summit as it covers all bands – but that was all too late now.

Once set-up, I started on 40m to try to get enough contacts into the log in case I had to abort quickly if the weather turned bad. There were no problems with calls on 40 metres though, I had what is now becoming usual, a pile-up of chasers calling, even managing 2 S2S contacts. Once the flow of calls finished, I decided that while it hadn’t yet started to rain, I would give 20 metres a go. The G90 has a band scope and after switching the antenna and rig to 20m, it was obvious 20m had passed its best, there was very little showing in the SSB part of the band. I only managed one contact, that with Lars SA4BLM who had also called me on 40m – he was a lot stronger on 20 metres as the skip distance is better for Sweden and Greece on 20m than on 40m. Lars was my only contact on 20 metres, so I decided I might as well pack up and as I was packing up, the rain started. Only light, but my timing couldn’t have been better.

Once back at the car, I loaded everything and set off home. When I passed the lift up to Blomberg and Zweisselberg, it was raining harder and I could see the summit was inside the clouds. If I had continued with my plan to activate that summit, I would have been halfway when the rains started and probably have been soaked by the time I reached the summit. So all in all, even though I only accrued two activator points not five, the choice of summits was right.

Photos – Buchberg:

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Photos – Schwarzer Berg:

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Equipment used:

Mountaintop travelling 40-litre rucksack with added radio section protection.
Xiegu G90.
Sotabeams linked dipole “Band Hopper” (used on both summits).
LambdaHalbe J-Pole vertical antenna for 17 metres (used on Buchberg).
10m DX-wire mini-mast (on Buchberg).
6m LambdaHalbe mini-mast (on Schwarzer Berg).
Sun umbrella screw-in foot (used on Schwarzer Berg).
Surveyors Tripod (as support for the 10m mast – used on Buchberg).
Battery box (2 x 5000maH hard-case 4S LIPOs).
4000 maH LiHV battery (carried but not used).
Painters thick plastic sheet.
Lightweight headphones.

Log – Buchberg:

Log – Schwarzer Berg:

Conclusions:

I was lucky that I chose to change the second summit to be activated. Stuck on a mountain without cover in a rainstorm is not fun.
The Linked dipole has now been modified to work on 17m as well as 20 & 40m as the LambdaHalbe 17m J-Pole has issues.
I’m two points closer to Mountain Goat – only 4 more points to go.
Never trust weather forecasts – how often have I said that?
Radio propagation conditions are definitely improving as Solar Cycle 25 “wakes up”.
I still have to test the LiHV battery on an activation, rather than just carrying the extra weight.

DD5LP/P – September 30th 2021 – DM/BW-695 Teck & DM/BW-078 Römerstein.

Posted on 02/10/2021 by VK2JI DD5LP G8GLM

Preparation:

I have had these two summits on my list for a while and as it’s quicker to bag the points with a couple of high-scoring summits rather than several lower-scoring summits, I had decided, based on the weather forecast 4 days earlier to head up to the Stuttgart area where these summits are on Wednesday 29th September. Of course, as seems to be a very common occurrence these days, the weather forecast changed and checking the forecast the day before, the area was expected to get rain and high winds. Both of which are not welcome on these summits. As it turned out the rain didn’t arrive but the high winds did, so I am happy that I rescheduled to Thursday the 30th of September.

I decided to use the repaired linked dipole for these activations to make sure it was working correctly again. This in turn meant taking the small 6-metre mast and for Römerstein something to support the base, so I packed the screw-in sun umbrella foot and indeed used that on Römerstein. On Teck, I was able to simply strap the mast to the end of the wooden table.

The Activation – Burg Teck

The drive from my home to Teck is straightforward as most of the route is on the Autobahn system and it took just under 2 hours start to finish (finish being the Hörnle Car Park at the other end of the ridge to where Castle Teck and the summit is located).

Teck has a long and for most of the 2-kilometre track, steep, walk, which, with a heavy backpack is very draining. (see pictures of the track later). Eventually, however, I got to my operating position and the area was fairly empty of visitors as the castle restaurant had not yet opened and a lot of people time their walk up the hill to coincide with that.

It always seems to happen, as it did again on Teck. I search around and find a clear frequency put out 2 or 3 calls to make 100% sure it is clear, then spot myself and start calling CQ SOTA. Within 5 minutes, some Idiot has started up 1 or 2 Kcs above or below of my frequency. Even if they say they can’t hear me as I’m running low power with a small antenna portable – they MUST hear the chasers calling me. In most cases, they simply don’t care and don’t check.

I’m then left with the situation – what do I do – do I move off and try to find a better frequency, where the same problem will happen again most likely, or do I “stick to my guns” and keep working on my frequency as there are also chasers who manage to get through and to hear me. After all, as an activator, I only need 4 contacts – all after that are a bonus – but I do try to work everyone who calls and can get through.

The pile-up on Teck was enormous, so much so that by the time I had worked all the stations I could on 40 metres, I had no time to move to 20 metres. That is sometimes the way of things.

While packing up someone came over and I explained to him in my best German what I was doing, only to find out this 80-year-old gentleman was in fact a US citizen (born in Germany but emigrated at an early age) who was visiting relatives in Stuttgart. Once we switched to English we had a nice and interesting conversation. We often say that one can learn about other cultures through talking to other amateurs over the air, in this case, the amateur pursuit of SOTA put me in a situation where I could talk to someone without the radio.

The drive from Teck to Römerstein took about 30 minutes including a forced detour for a closed road (my SOTA activations wouldn’t be complete without having to detour from the expected route!). After a little checking, I eventually found the other car park and the start of the track up to Römerstein “Türm” (Tower).

The Activation – Römerstein

After loading up at the car, the walk up to the summit is shorter than my previous route but also steeper, so the first order of priority after getting to one of the tables on the summit was a drink of water and a short rest. The summit was almost deserted with just one couple cooking their lunch on an open fire in one of the prepared fire-pit areas. This appears to be an area that is prepared for usage by boy scouts and similar organisations.

As I had not got onto 20m on Teck, I started on 20m looking for some S2S contacts and also to make some contacts. The Over the Horizon Radar was “swooping” up and down 20m unfortunately but despite that in total on Römerstein I worked 64 chasers in 30 minutes including taking the antenna down twice to switch bands between 20 & 40m. The pile-ups on both bands were really “Over the Top”. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that it was a 10 point summit?

A lot of people were giving 73 and 44 at the end of a contact, and some who were in parks giving me their FF number, so much so, that I wondered if I was on a WWFF preferred frequency. I was on 7162KHz. So after returning home I’ve searched the web for a list of preferred frequencies and found that WWFF is in fact 7.144 so I wasn’t stepping on anyone else’s frequency. In fact, the closest frequency was 7160 kHz which is listed for SOTA usage.

I received the strongest best (real) reports that I have had for a long time, both 20 & 40m were good inside Europe (but no DX) – I had 3 x S2S contacts from this summit and 5 from Teck – I had lots of 5-9 or 5-9+10 reports and general comments about it being a real strong signal. I was using the G90 with the speech compressor turned on and the linked Dipole at about 5 metres AGL on both summits.

Photos – Burg Teck:

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Photos – Römerstein:

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Equipment used:

Mountaintop travelling 40-litre rucksack with added radio section protection.
Xiegu G90.
Sotabeams linked dipole “Band Hopper”.
6m LambdaHalbe mini-mast.
Sun umbrella screw-in foot (used at Römerstein).
Komunica HF-PRO2-Plus-T HF/VHF vertical and photo tripod with radials (as a backup antenna – carried but not used).
Battery box (2 x 5000maH hard-case 4S LIPOs).
Painters thick plastic sheet.
Lightweight headphones.

Log – Teck:

Log – Römerstein:

Conclusions:

Two great activations – the pile-ups were enormous – but controlled and polite. I have activated both Teck and Römerstein before but this time I tried a new (shorter) route up to Römerstein. Er – the summit is still the same height, so what does a shorter route mean .. Yes – a lot steeper track! It is a better approach though as the car park is larger and I guess this is the way you are supposed to get there up a track, not bashing through the forest from the other smaller car park as I used to do!
The Linked dipole is back working correctly again after its problems on the last activation (broken wire in the PL-259 plug).
The number of chasers eager to make a contact with these 8 and 10 point summits was overwhelming, I tried to work all of the callers but I’m sure I missed several in the “wall of noise” which wasn’t helped by the OTHR and splattering QRM and QSB!
The smartphone – an LG K42 was able to be angled to be visible but remains a weak component in the summit pack. It simply does not have the needed brightness and contrast to be able to be viewed in sunlight as my previous (3G only) phones had (3G is now decommissioned in Germany).
These were summits with steep climbs and the rucksack is still too heavy. The strengthening through the addition of the plastic box to form a protected section in the bottom of the pack for the radio, batteries and accessories worked well and hasn’t added much weight but I do need to do an activation with just the small and lightweight LiHV battery rather than the two 5ah LIPOs that I am presently carrying to each summit and then only using, at most, half of the capacity of one battery.
The 20 watts from the XIEGU G90 with its speech compressor turned on along with the linked dipole is the “sweet spot” for portable equipment. I was getting the majority of (true) reports as 5-9 or 5-9+ and I could hear stations very well once I managed to get just one station calling. In the pile-ups, it’s normal that the radio de-senses with so many signals.

DD5LP/P – September 21st 2021 activations of DL/AL-149 Blender, DL/AL-281 Urserberg and DL/AL-146 Sonneneck.

Posted on 23/09/2021 by VK2JI DD5LP G8GLM

Preparation:

Still looking for summits that I haven’t activated this year, but also ones that I might achieve the contacts into VK that I had a week earlier, I had to rule out any summits that either had a long drive to them or needed a lift of some kind to access (which normally only start at 9 am local time). Of course, I’d like the higher scoring summits but with the first two restrictions, that’s difficult. So after searching, what I came up with was a plan to activate two summits that I know and two new-to-me summits. I entered the lat/long for each of the parking spots into the car’s GPS-Navi system so that I could rely on that to get me to the best spot to start my walks from. My hope was that from the first and even the second summit I might get contacts into VK/ZL if I set off from home early enough. The fourth summit, not listed here was the 4-point DL/AL-145 Hauchenberg which will have to wait for another day as once I was finished on DL/AL-146 Sonneneck, I was too tired to take on another challenging long walk.

Blender DL/AL-149

Leaving at 6:20 am local time, I was well set to meet my schedule and the trip down to Blender was fairly good, only with some delay in the early morning traffic going around the Kempten ring road. Once at my parking spot under Blender, I loaded up with both antennas (SOTABeams linked dipole and loaded vertical HF-PRO-2) so that I could possibly run some comparison tests if I had time.

Despite arriving almost 30 minutes before my planned time Mike 2E0YYY/P must have been up even earlier in the UK as he was already setting up on G/SP-013 Gun. So after the first shock of the seat bench, that used to be on this summit, being gone, I laid down my plastic sheet on the grass and started to unpack and put the station together.

All seemed to go well, I had the 6-metre mast in the screw-in sun umbrella base and the linked dipole running down from it in inverted-v configuration, the coax back to the plastic sheet where I had the G90 connected to its battery box and ready to go. I tuned to Mike’s frequency and quickly called him but looking at the display, I could see there was an infinite SWR on the antenna. As a quick fix, I tried the internal tuner in the G90 – even it could not do anything with it. There was no alternative, I had to lower the mast and check both the links and the feed-point. All seemed OK, so my conclusion at this point, after another quick test (which still showed an infinite SWR) was that the problem was either in the PL259 plug or the coax cable itself. I couldn’t do anything about that on the summit so this had to wait until I got home. Later it turned out that I was correct, the centre conductor of the thin coax was no longer connected to the centre pin of the PL-259 plug. Luckily I also had the Komunica HF-PRO-2 with me and within 5 minutes, that was set up on its converted photo tripod with radial wires and the contact with Mike was made. Unfortunately, no contracts were made into VK/ZL from this summit. I believe I would have had a better chance with the dipole, if only for its increased height. That being said, I could hear stations from VK & ZL on the vertical and had there not have been so many other high powered stations calling over the top of me, I might have been able to get a contact or two “down under” – another time …

With the problems with the dipole antenna, I had of course lost a lot of time, so once the flow of calls stopped, I decided to take one last try at calling Ron ZL4RMF, without success and then packed up to go to the next summit, Urserberg which I could see from where I was on Blender.

Photos – Blender:

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Urserberg DL/AL-281

The drive from Blender to Urserberg (actually the public car park for the local lake is at the start of the track up to Urserberg) only takes 10 to 15 minutes. When I was getting close, there were road signs for the road being closed, but … it said the road was open as far as the löake! Great – and so it was – the road was open just up to the entrance to the car park. The road after this point winds through the forest and the reason for the road closure was that they were felling the trees closest to the road and in some cases, they would be falling across the road, so the road definitely needed to be closed!

I had originally considered taking the mast and linked dipole to this summit as well but given the fact that it was broken, the remaining summits would be activated with the HF-PRO-2 only. Mike was still on G/SP-013 Gun when I got to the summit and set up while being watched by an inquisitive cow behind a single wire fence. This was of course a “different” S2S for both of us as I had changed my summit. Mike had just finished a contact into VK3 but commented that the noise on the bands (40 and 20m) had not improved. Indeed the noise was like a badly suppressed car or motorbike ignition system of years ago and this was heard both in the UK/Europe and in VK/ZL. This was activity in the ionosphere making receivers worldwide desense as the AGC circuits reacted to the pulses of electrical noise!

The views from Urserberg, looking down from the top of the ski-fields are lovely now that the early morning mist had mostly cleared but the temperatures were still sub 10°C even though the sun was coming out. After working Mike I spotted myself and the calls came flowing in. As I was a little behind schedule and I did not know how difficult the next two summits would be, I decided to call it quits after the calls dried up on 40 metres and didn’t try 20 metres. Once packed up it’s a good 15-20 minute walk back down to the car park, where I decided to have lunch.

Photos – Urserberg:

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Sonneneck Höhe DL/AL-146

This was a new summit for me so I arrived and parked at the end of the road in Oberhofen, just before a gate on the road by a house that marked the start of private land. Private as, no car access is allowed, walkers are welcomed – including by the dog who lives at the house. Equipped with the map shown above, I set off from Oberhofen with my reduced rucksack (only talking the HF-PRO2 and tripod, not the mast and wire antenna on this long walk), and it was a long walk, which took me 40 minutes to get to the summit. I followed the “main” track shown on the map over Voglerholz and curving back up to the summit. Accidentally on the way back I came back on the other route under the summit as the track indicated on the map as being small has been expanded and sand and stone laid down so that tractors and diggers can get access using this route. On reaching the top track, the track coming in from the left is actually part of the Europe-wide “JackobsWeg” pilgrims way. I have come across this on other SOTA and HEMA summits recently. It seems the pilgrims are expected to climb all of the summits along their route!

As this was my first time on this summit, I was happy to find the tripoint stone and about 5 metres further on a nice bench and a wooden sign on a metal post declaring this as Sonneneck Höhe – which is the correct name for the actual summit.

After setting up the gear, with the HF_PRO-2 antenna set to 40m, I saw there were several other activators shown on SotaWatch and one – OE/HB9BCK/P was a good 59 signal so I called him for a 6-point S2S contact meaning I had now had S2S contacts on all 3 summits. In fact, soon after when I was calling CQ, I also had an S2S with Chris DL1CR/P who I haven’t talked to for a while – he was out on the DM/NS-122 2-pointer summit. After about 15 minutes of calls on 40 metres, I was determined to get some contacts on 20 metres as well and three more contacts from Sweden, Finland and Spain went into the log.

This was the point where I considered my next action. I knew I had about a 40-minute walk back to my car and then an over 30-minute drive to the next summit which, I also didn’t know and looks like it was as long a walk as Sonneneck had been, so rather than risk anything, I decided to cancel that last summit. I have the mapped route for it, the next time I am in the area, possibly when there is snow on the ground and the 3 winter bonus points are active?

As mentioned above, the return to the car did not go quite as planned. Through inattention and not retracing my route on the map, I ended up coming back via a different route. This route may have been 5 minutes quicker as it turned out. It had been threatening to rain for a while and there were a few light drops of rain, which also confirmed my decision to leave the last summit. That said, as soon as I set off home in the car, the sun came out and on arriving home it was up around 20°C!

The drive home was uneventful and I was home by 3 pm – ready for a cool beer and a rest!

Photos – Sonneneck:

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Equipment used:

Mountaintop travelling 40-litre rucksack.
Xiegu G90 portable HF transceiver.
Komunica HF-PRO2-Plus-T HF/VHF vertical and photo tripod with radials.
6-metre Lambdahalbe mast and SOTABeams Linked dipole (failed when put up on Blender).
Battery box (2 x 5000maH hard-case 4S LIPOs).
Painters thick plastic sheet.
Lightweight headphones.
Screw-in sun umbrella foot (mast support) taken to and only used on Blender.

Log – Blender:

Log – Urserberg:

Log – Sonneneck:

Conclusions:

The problem with the linked dipole turned out to be a broken centre connector in the PL-259 plug. Now repaired and strengthened, so hopefully, this trusty old antenna will continue to give good service for a couple of years.
I still haven’t been able to compare performance between the linked dipole on a 6-metre mast versus the HF_PRO-2 loaded vertical on a small photo tripod. I am fairly certain that the dipole will work best, however, the convenience of the vertical and the fact that I had it all packed inside my rucksack as a backup has earned its position on the summits for a while to come.
It was right to set off back after the third summit. The fourth, with a similarly long walk into Sonneneck Höhe, would have been too much for what was already a hard day.

73 ’til the next summit(s).