DD5LP/P – October 21st. 2017 VK-EU S2S event – DL/AM-001 Peissenberg.

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Preparation:

The now becoming annual, VK/ZL/JA – EU/UK S2S event, was set for this date a couple of months ago before we could know how either weather or radio conditions would be. My initial plan was to make this interesting for chasers by activating DM/BW-002 Proeller in the Bavarian Forest region. As this can be a 3 hour drive from where I live there was no way that I could get there in time for the long path, Grey line window So my plan was to travel over on Friday afternoon and stay overnight in the “Gasthaus Hochproeller” that sits about 100 vertical metres below the summit and then walk up in about 30 minutes to the summit on Saturday morning.

Unfortunately the week before this activation, I wasn’t feeling so great and then I got the predicted weather forecast for the summit – rain and gusty winds of up to 53 Km/h were expected exactly at the time I would be trying to activate. So I had to make the decision to either cancel completely, as some other stations did based on the weather across Europe, or to head for a closer summit with some protection from the winds. I decided to take the latter option and to head to a summit that I know very well – Peissenberg. As well as only being 45 minutes drive from home it is a “drive’on”summit. The the car park is located on the summit from where I have a 5 minute walk to the seating banks near the Church, where I always set-up.

After my tests with new antennas over the last few activations, I decided to go with my known configuration of my FT-817, home-modified 25w amplifier, the SOTABeams band-hopper linked dipole and my short 6 metre portable squid pole. Given the ease of access to the site, I considered taking my ICOM IC-7300 rig but given the likelihood of rain, I decided against that.

The Location:

As mentioned above Peissenberg is an easy access summit about 45 minutes drive from home. It is the location of the local TV transmitter and also the local 10 metre amateur radio beacon. There is a good restaurant on the summit along with a large church. The complete name of the location is HohenPeissenberg and is well signposted. I have activated from this summit many times before and indeed made contacts into Australia from here.

The Activation:

The drive down was in rain until I got to about 10 Km from the summit where the roads where dry as they had not got any rain (yet). After setting up the station, the wind increased and the rain started. Luckily it only lasted 10 minutes. It stayed cold though for the whole of the 2 hour activation. To start with only a few stations were on the 20m band and several of those were too close for me to hear because of skip distance. Later with standard Nets, the scouts JOTA event and the number of SOTA activators out, the usual frequencies on the band became very busy.  I heard Andrew VK1AD/2 just above the noise level – whether I could have worked him, I’m not sure but I didn’t get the chance as another European SOTA activator started working stations on the same frequency!

At one point I had S5 QRN and it sounded like a storm was heading my way but luckily that never arrived.

A couple more points on the SFI and a point or 2 less on the K index (although that wasn’t that bad at about 3 I think) may have made some VK/ZL portable stations workable for me. Perhaps a better antenna (one with some gain) could have made some difference?

I don’t think anything would have been different if  I had taken my IC-7300 to the summit given that I was getting 5-9+ reports towards the end of the activation with my 817 and 25w amp (which had 0% charge in its battery when I went QRT – lucky timing!). As we all know – “it’s all about the radio conditions” and they were not with us today.

Photos:

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Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

SOTABeams Bandhopper linked dipole.

Lambdahalbe 6m fibreglass mast.

Modified QAMP amplifier (30-35W on 40m, 20-25W on 20m).

Log:

Conclusions:

Although I had a great time with seven S2S contacts unfortunately because of the radio conditions I managed no S2S contacts into VK/ZL and the only JA activators (who went out despite an oncoming cyclone!) were operating CW not SSB. I was surprised not to make any contacts with VK or ZL home station chasers as normally they seem to get though in all conditions

73 ’til the next Summit!

DD5LP/P – October 4th. and 5th. 2017 – DL/AL-276 Attensberg.

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Preparation:

Apart from being a SOTA outing, this action had another non-radio related reason. We – Gabriele, my wife and I have a young dog “Bonnie” who has never been away with us on holiday. As I had found on my last activation of Attensberg that the Gasthaus (hotel) on the foot of the hill, was “Pet friendly”, we decided to take a short, two night, break to see how the dog copes with staying overnight in a strange environment. This area (about 1 hr 40 minutes drive away from my home QTH) has several SOTA summits that I haven’t as yet activated, so, if time permitted, I should be able to fit one or even two activations in.

The Location:

The hotel – the “Gasthaus am Paradies” in Berg near Oberstaufen is a wonderful, family run hotel and cafe in a very beautiful location in the southern most part of Allgau not far from the border between Germany and Austria. Even without the 10 or so SOTA summits in the area, if you wish to visit a really beautiful part of Bavaria this area is worth the visit. The highest and hence highest scoring, summit in the Area is DL/AL-132 Hochgrat and as a look at the SOTA database statistics will show you, this is a much visited 8 pointer summit (not only visited a lot by SOTA activators but also by the general public). The cable car takes you to within 125 vertical metres of the summit and then it’s a 30 minutes hike up a trail to get to the summit cross. So that was the plan, activate HochGrat on the main day that we were staying and then possibly fit in an activation of Attensberg again as it was literally a 5 minute climb up the hill outside the back door of the hotel!

The Activations:

The drive down I knew from my previous activation and the GPS Navi took us the same route. The journey was uneventful and thankfully the weather changed from pouring rain when we set off to sunshine as we arrived. This was a good omen!

The Tuesday that we travelled down was actually a public holiday “Tag der Deutsche Einheit” (Germany’s re-unification day) and as the weather was expected to be bad at least until mid afternoon, we did not plan any activities for the Tuesday and just concentrated on settling into the hotel with our dog and taking her for a long walk to get her accustomed to the area. She and we, had a bit of an unsettled night that first night, which meant we were all awake early and I decided to do an activation of Attensberg (aka Kapf) before breakfast was going to be served. This was combined with a morning walk for the dog up the hill escorted by my wife. This also coincided with when Andrew VK1AD and Mike 2E0YYY hoped to be out to catch the long path window between EU and VK. Unfortunately Andrew had to cancel and I could not even hear Mike at any time during my activation but the activation itself went VERY well – as you’ll hear below:

Wednesday 4th. October 2017.

Once the equipment was set up (I had carried my sun umbrella screw-in base up the hill as well but decided to simply strap the squid pole supporting the linked dipole to a fence post – which worked fine). I spotted and called CQ on 14.285MHz as it was clear. Nothing, no responses, so I tuned around the band and it was very quiet – even the background atmospheric noise level was low. Eventually I got a call at 05:55 UTC from Rainer DF4TD from some 35-40 km away (obviously just ground wave) this proved at least that I was getting out! Listening on 14.285, I could JUST hear some stations in the noise that sounded like they were Italian. This wasn’t looking too good. At this point my wife suggested she go back down to the hotel and I helped her down the steepest parts by taking the dog (who of course was having fun and pulling on the lead to run down the hill).

Upon returning to the station at about 0620 UTC, I realised immediately that the noise level was higher and those Italian stations that were in the noise were now 5-9+. It was as if someone had turned a switch on to make the band usable. Checking the MUF later, it was under 8MHz up to around 0615 and then shot up to above 14MHz, so I think this is what I experienced.

Mike had spotted himself on 14.325 MHz, I listened but there was no sign of him there. I gave a quick call – no response, so I decided to move to 14.310 (away from the Italians who were still chatting on 14.285), re-spotted and called CQ to be welcomed by a call from John ZL1BYZ in New Zealand! If that had been the only contact to the antipodes it would have made the activation. Once I finished a brief chat with John however it was followed by calls from Tony VK3CAT in Victoria Australia, Alexi RW3XZ in Russia, then another well-known VK chaser, Ernie VK3DET. Not to be beaten by the VKs, Warren ZL2AJ then called in, followed by Dinos SV3IEG from Greece and Jon VK7JON from Tasmania Australia. The activation was finished off after two more long distance EU contacts with George SV1PBC in Greece and Vadim R1BCE in Russia. The band went quiet again at 0650. As you can guess, I was really happy with this activation. I never expected to get so many contacts from down under and I’m fairly sure that was my first VK7 contact from Europe. But was this just a fluke? Or are we now back with a stable “Long Path” window to VK/ZL in the mornings? I decided I would try on Thursday morning before we leave to go home and see if something similar occurs – using the same equipment from the same location.

But first there was Hochgrat to be activated in the afternoon. Or was there? Actually I had to cancel. I simply didn’t feel fit enough even for the simple 30 minute hikes to and from the summit to the cable car. Perhaps this was caused by the sleepless night and the early rise. In any case, as I had now decided to do the second activation the next morning, I decided to have a relaxing afternoon with my wife and dog. Hochgrat won’t go away, it’ll be there for our next (longer) visit to this area or perhaps I might just drive down one day from my home QTH just to activate Hochgrat.

Thursday 5th. October 2017.

This mornings activation was Interesting – somewhat similar to yesterdays (using the same equipment from the same location at the same time). Signals were down a little on yesterday and the weather a lot colder but I still had the pleasure of calls from 3 stations in ZL. ZL1BYZ John, ZL2AJ Warren and ZL1WA, Jacky (being the new contact). In VK both Tony VK3CAT and Ernie VK3DET came on again so I had a good comparison between the two days for both ZL and VK stations. I should also mention that I also worked Ian VK5CZ in South Australia. Nice as I haven’t spoken to Ian for a long time.

In Europe I managed contacts with Jack, OH3GZ in Finland and Rainer DF4TD who had gone out static mobile to see if he could get some contacts into VK/ZL. It does look definitely like skip was long on both days.

I also noted a time when the band appeared to “turn on” – on Wednesday that was 0620 UTC, today it was about 0600 UTC. I saw very clearly the window move from east to west across NZ and then VK. It looks like from what Mike 2E0YYY reported that a similar thing was happening in Europe with Mike only getting the contacts probably about 30-40 minutes after they were loudest with me on Wednesday.

My conclusion (from this not very scientific test) is that we do have a good Long Path windows between EU and VK/ZL of about 30-40 minutes (after the MUF gets high enough) covering in turn ZL through VK5. The action then repeating for the UK after the Central EU stations, 35 minutes later. So as someone in Germany is in contact with someone in VK5, the UK stations may start getting the ZL stations.

The VK & ZL stations are well equipped with 400 watts or more and 3 element beams, whereas I was using just 25 watts and a dipole at 5 meters AGL. For any S2S contacts to work, I would suggest some more power would be good – perhaps 50 watts at each end and if one end has some kind of portable antenna with gain (perhaps phased verticals) the chance of a contact between two summit stations will be increased. It’s not going to be easy in this months VK<>EU S2S event on the 21st. but it seems it will be possible for contacts to be made at least between chasers and activators.

 

John ZL1BYZ was kind enough to record a little of my signal from his end and it shows what can be achieved with about 20 watts of SSB and a simple dipole antenna (as long as the other station has a nice beam and good receiver of course) – here is that audio clip:

Audio clip DD5LP heard in ZL.

Photos 4/10/2017:

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Photos 5/10/2017:

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Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

SOTABeam band hopper linked dipole.

6 metre LamdaHalbe telescopic squid pole.

Modified QAMP amplifier (20-25W on 20m).

Painters sheet.

Sun umbrella screw-in base (not used).

Log 4/10/2017:

Log 5/10/2917:

Conclusions:

A very succesful pair of activations that showed consistency across the two days, so it appears that the Long Path window is now back for the Autumn/Winter season and this is just in time for the planned VK<>EU S2S event on the 21st. of October.

Using “tried and tested” equipment is always good. The new antennas need some more work before I can rely on them.

Most importantly, the first hotel trip with “Bonnie” our dog despite some early uncertainty on her part worked out to be VERY successful and opens up other holiday / SOTA possibilities for the future.

73 ’til the next Summit!

DD5LP/P – September 30th. 2017 – DL/AM-176 Rentschen.

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Preparation:

Following the uncertainty whether the new Bazoka PRO loaded vertical antenna was working on 20m when tried at Attenberg, I needed another activation to test it and to see whether band conditions (which had now improved a little) had been the reason. The site had to allow me to erect the 20 metre dipole antenna alongside the Bazoka. Rentschen, being a large flat, grass fielded area (with little or no tree cover), not too far from my home QTH, made it a natural choice. As I had already activated it earlier in the year, so would not gain any points for the activation, but this was about testing equipment. At the same time, I wanted to try out the new digital mode (FT-8) from the summit and had prepared a windows tablet and interfaces for both audio and CAT commands to connect it to the FT-817.

The hope was, that if indeed the Bazoka PRO worked fairly well on 20m as well as 40m, it would make a great antenna to use for my trip to Hochgrat the following week where space is limited and tourist traffic is high.

So the full set of equipment would be used: the FT-817ND plus amplifier, the tripod and Bazoka PRO wideband vertical and the SOTABeams Band Hopper linked dipole with the 6m fishing pole. The screw-in base would also be taken along as there are no easy mast support structures at Rentschen.

On the digital (FT-8) side my windows 10 tablet with Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and interface cables would be packed.

The Location:

Rentschen is a one point, low summit. It is about a 50 minutes drive from my home and therefore one of my “local” summits. The actual summit is marked by a trig-point stone which is about 100m away from the road, where I would park my car as usual. The summit is between Rottenbuch and Steingaden villages.

The Activation:

The trip down I could do without any GPS Navigator or maps, I have driven the route many times and indeed after about 45 minutes, I was already parked and unpacking the car. I first set up the tripod with the Bazoka antenna and then followed by putting up the linked dipole and eventually setting out the FT-817 and computer equipment. All completed without issues and by 11:15 local time (45 minutes before my alerted time), I was ready to go. First of all I tuned around 20m on the Bazoka PRO and the dipole and straight away the difference was very obvious. The FT-817 on the dipole was lively as usual and I could hear several loud stations. On the Bazoka the band was very quiet and while I could hear some of the same stations, they were at least 4 S-points down on the dipole. I then repeated these tests on 40 metres and the Bazoka PRO performed a lot better, the band was popping and the difference in signal strengths was  only 1 or possibly 1.5 S-points. With the top of the vertical being about 2.5 metres off the ground and the centre of the dipole around 5 metres up, this difference is reasonable. So on receive at least, it seemed the Bazoka wasn’t going to perform well on 20 metres.

I decided to go back to the 20 metres dipole and put out some calls on 20m to get some SOTA contacts in the log and if the stations were loud asked them to listen for me on the vertical. Although I could still hear a couple of the chasers on the vertical, none of them could her me.

Once I had no more chasers waiting I connected up the tablet to try some FT-8. As soon as I started the software and selected the 20m frequency via the software a stream of decoded signals came in. I did have problems with using the software due to being outside. The sunlight on the screen made it difficult to see and to locate the mouse. I had three ways to move the mouse pointer – the tablet has a touchscreen but my big fingers made this difficult to use accurately. The bluetooth keyboard has a touchpad on it, which while it worked, moved the mouse around too quickly, when I could see where the mouse was. The best, albeit also not good, method was to use the bluetooth mouse. The problem here was once again, not being able to see where the mouse was on the screen in the sunlight but also finding an acceptable flat surface to run the mouse over. I will need to see if I can set the mouse pointer to be a lot bigger and darker and set it to move a lot slower. If I can make the WSJT-x program windows larger as well, this could help. All things learnt…

As regards FT-8 contacts – although I was receiving signals OK, after spotting on SOTAWatch I received no chaser calls, in fact no calls at all. Checking the PSK reporter, when I got home (log below), I was getting out fine with just the 5w running barefoot (no amplifier) from the FT-817, perhaps I needed to keep trying longer, however that was not to be as the farmer who owned the field came along to say he intended to mow the grass to make hay. He kindly offered me another field, still on the summit, but I decided I would pack up and leave as the time to disassemble, remove and reassemble probably wouldn’t warrant any addition contacts. I already had actions to do from my tests in any case. The vertical needs trying with an ATU and with a counterpoise, the tablet needs re-configuring to be more visible when in the open.

Photos:

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Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

SOTABEAMS band hopper linked dipole.

LambdaHalbe 6m Mini-mast.

Modified QAMP amplifier (25W on 20m, 35W on 40m).

Thick plastic painters sheet

Screw-in mast base

Windows 10 tablet with BT mouse and keyboard and interface to the FT-817.

Log:

PSK reporter Log (stations that heard my FT-8 transmissions):

Conclusions:

The Bazoka PRO is not performing well on 20 metres. An ATU may help (despite the fact that the antenna analyser indicates a reasonable impedance across the band) or perhaps adding my counterpoise wires to the bottom of the antenna could also help it to operate better.

Operating FT-8 from a summit, has the same difficulties as operating any digital mode from a summit operation of the computer (tablet in this case), is difficult in the sunlight and mouse operation was a pain however the Tablet to FT-817 Interface worked perfectly. Some kind of stand and shade would most likely help but then make the solution less portable and hence only possible on simple summits.

73 ’til the next Summit!

DD5LP/P – September 23rd. 2017 – DL/AL-276 Attenberg.

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Preparation:

I have recently bought a new antenna, a wideband (40m – 10m) Komunica Bazoka PRO, which first tests mounted on a magnetic mount sat on my car roof, with the car parked in the open country, worked very well receiving stations from all around Europe, Australia and New Zealand. As the specification for this antenna says that it needs no ground plane (as provided by a metal car roof), I decided to try it out connected on top of a tripod with no ground plane, counterpoise or radials and according to the Rig Expert AA-30 antenna analyser, the SWR trace was not a great deal different, to when mounted on the car roof. I therefore needed to try the antenna on the small tripod, “in the field” or rather on a summit. The enemy of a vertical antenna is trees and many of the summits local to me are wooded, so I needed to look further a field.

The Location:

There are several summits near to the Bregenzer Wald / Southern Allgau area that I have not activated.  These are all at least 1.5 hours away from my home QTH and so not easy to get to early enough, for, for example a long path contact to VK and ZL. In this case however I wanted to find a summit, not covered with trees where I could try out my new antenna. At the same time, I was looking for a hotel where the complete family (my wife, the dog and I), could take a short break and this area looked like a nice option. In fact the hotel below the Attenberg summit, accepts guests with dogs. So this activation was to be a pre-cursor to possible activation of some other summits in the area later.

The Activation:

The drive down was uneventful and relatively straight forward. Interestingly for some reason the GPS Navigator took me home via a different route. In any case the trip down and back both took just over 90 minutes.

Once I arrived and parked in the car park of the Paradise Cafe Oberstaufen, it was only a short walk up the hill to the summit. The weather forecast was good and indeed upon arriving at the summit at about 11 am local (0900 UTC), the sun was shining and there was no sign of any rain. Station set-up took less time than when I use my dipole antenna and the first contact with Lothar DL3HXX was in the log 15 minutes later. This was on 40 metres and the band was very busy. On two occasions after checking a frequency was free and spotting myself and putting out a CQ, I found another station had simply started transmitting oon the same frequency, or very close to it, meaning I had to QSY and re-spot etc. This was somewhat annoying as I know the stations doing this should have been able to hear me (as I worked stations close to them during the activation) but they obviously considered their use of the frequency for a special event station (GB0CMR) was more important, than my use of the frequency.

I was happy to have an S2S contract with Juerg HB9BIN, on holiday on a summit in Poland as well as chaser calls from Germany, Poland, Spain and the UK. The antenna was as far as I could determine, working as well as my dipole on 40 metres, so I decided to try 20 metres. As soon as I switched to 20 metres, the band sounded very quiet, even the normal atmospheric noise seemed to be low. I don’t know if this indicates that the antenna was not working well or simply that the band was not open to anywhere. I could hear one or two stations on the band but at signal strengths where I didn’t consider calling with my 25 watts. I did self spot on 20m and put out some CQ calls but with no replies. At this point in time, the sun was covered by clouds and the temperature dropped and as some walkers came by are were interested in what I was doing, time got away from me. Where I was on this summit there would have been space to put up the linked horizontal dipole to compare signals however I decided better of it, leaving that for another time and packed up and headed back down to the Hotel’s Cafe to have a warm soup and to inquire about the hotel and confirm that guests with a dog were welcome.

For those looking for a VERY easy summit to access and activate, the one pointer Attenberg (known as Kapf by the locals) is one of the easiest.

Photos:

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Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

Komunica Bazoka PRO wideband vertical antenna mounted on a camera tripod.

Modified QAMP amplifier (35W on 40m, 25W on 20m).

Log:

Conclusions:

Although this was a positive test for the Bazoka PRO on 40 metres with no ground plane, I still do not know whether it works well on other bands. The next time I test this, I do need to set up the linked dipole or the OCF first and then I can compare the Komunica Bazoka PRO loaded vertical on both receive and transmit to the horizontally polarised antenna.

73 ’til the next Summit!

DD5LP/P – August 30th. 2017 – DL/BE-094 Irschenhausen.

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Preparation:

Mike 2E0YYY contacted me suggesting that we might try for some long path contacts into VK/ZL as conditions had improved a little from the horrible state they had been in for the last couple of months. This would mean me chosing a summit that I could get to by 8am  local time, which rules out several nice summits as they need the cable car lift to get to them and they don’t start running until 9am or later.

I looked at the summits that would be accessible and realised that I hadn’t activated Irschenhausen for the last two years and I had made a contact into VK from there. So Irschenhausen it would be. I would use the usual kit – the FT817, my small modified Ramsey amplifier to take that up to 20 or 25 watts, feeding the SOTABeams Band hopper linked dipole on a 5 metre pole. I would also take my screw-in base as well, as I have found that it’s easier to carry that than look for a suitable post or small tree.

The Location:

I have moved my home QTH since my original activation of this summit, so the drive to my parking spot has increased to nearly an hour. Irschenhausen is located above the village of the same name just off the B11 road running north-south down the Eastern side of Starnberger Sea – one of five large lakes near Munich. The walk from the parking spot takes about 40 minutes, first along a field track and then into the forest and keep going upwards at every junction until you find yourself at the highest spot.

The Activation:

The alarm was set for 5:45am and all the gear laid out ready to be picked up and taken. I actually woke at 5:30 am and was able to leave by 6:30am rather than my planned 7am, which worked out well as I missed most of the heavy traffic en-route. The weather forecast was for a dry morning, but rain to appear in the afternoon, however as I planned to be back home by 11am, this didn’t concern me. On getting to the turn off from the B11 to Irschenhausen, I saw half the road was blocked off with a barrier and a sign saying that access was only possible up to the restaurant in the village – not knowing where that was, I decided to try in any case but as I got into the village, my next turn-off was also half closed with a sign that said access only possible up to the road works and no further. Again not knowing how far up the road the road works were, I decided to try anyway – it might just mean some more walking. As it turned out, despite a trough cut all the way up the road, that had been recently filled in (but not fully up to the road level), I managed to get all the way to my parking spot. I had been lucky.

Once I got the gear out of the car, I started my walk, which seemed longer than I remembered but indeed it did take just over 20 minutes to walk to the summit. As I set off I saw a wind turbine that hadn’t been there at my last visit and I hoped it wasn’t on the summit – in fact it turned out to be much further away and caused me no issues at all. This summit has a forest all over it – which I believe may account for some of the problems that I was later to have on the bands. In any case, on arrival at the summit I screwed the sun umbrella base into the ground and dropped my 6m fibreglass mast into it. After running the dipole out and setting up that station on the ground on my faithful painter’s thick plastic sheet, I started by listening around 20 metres. It was very quiet and it was hard to find more than one or two stations on. To add to the problem the local cell phone networks were playing up meaning that getting a self spot out was very hit and miss. It seems that although Vodaphone indicates a 4G Internet data link from this summit, it doesn’t always work and Telekom’s 3G link often dropped to “edge” (slow) speeds.

To start with there were a lot of late season mosquitos – most of which I flattened before they could bite me, but I did go away with a few “souvenir” bites. I was surprised to find these so late in summer and so far away from water but I guess the forest creates a damp climate for them.

As the main reason for the activation was to try for a long path contact into VK or ZL I continued trying on 20m and just by tuning around found a couple of interesting contacts. One contact was with Jesus, EA9ACF in Ceuta, the Spanish enclave in Northern Africa. He was booming in. After a while my self spots got out and I managed contacts with a few of the usual chasers but QSB was a real problem. Later I heard a Japanese station JA8COE, Tako at a true S9 and then what appeared to be an Italy – Australia net where a station in NSW and one in Queensland, Australia were getting through at about 5-5 or 5-6. I had no chance of getting into the net or through Tako’s pile-up but the path was definitely open. I also listened for some other SOTA activations in Europe that had been spotted without success but thanks to perseverance from Christos and Stavros (SV2OXS and SV2RUJ), I managed an S2S with SV/MC-089. Once I decided 20 metres wasn’t improving and while I had alerted, I would operate on 40 metres as well as 20m, I decided to take down the antenna, adjust the links and switch the 817 and amplifier and try 40 metres. It was like chalk and cheese. The band was full! Finding a free frequency was difficult and after one SOTA QSO would normally become unusable from the splatter of other stations, so I was constantly moving and re-spotting (when the spotting worked). After a while I decided that time was short as we were to visit friends in the afternoon and I had to first get home and ready for the second trip of the day. Pack-up and return to where the car was parked and no sign of road work blocking my exit, so it was back home before the traffic got worse later in the day.

Photos:

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Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

SOTABeams Band Hopper linked dipole.

LambdaHalbe 6m Mini-mast.

Modified QAMP amplifier (35W on 40m).

Thick plastic painters sheet.

Sun Umbrella screw-in base.

Log:

Conclusions:

Whilst band conditions were difficult on 20 metres the trip out was worth it as the fact that I heard a Japanese and two Australian (presumably super) stations, does mean band conditions are getting better.

I suspect the trees on this forested summit may have been part of the reason that I did not get out very well. The use of a vertical antenna may have been better for DX but it would have suffered even more from the tree landscape.

For just one point, there has to be a reason to come to this summit (for me it was the activation time) there are several just as easy to get to later in the day better summits.

73 ’til the next Summit!

DD5LP/P – August 13th. 2017 – DL/AL-149 Blender and DL/AL-179 Weichberg (sort of).

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Preparation:

After meeting Thomas DK1TK in a local electrical retail store, where he works and realising we were both Hams, we discussed me taking him on a SOTA activation, so he could see if it’s something he would like to get involved with. He was already equipped with good portable gear and operates portable QRP with a KX2 and a home made vertical antenna on a 10m fibre glass pole.  After some discussion we decided on activating Blender (a reasonably easy summit) along with Hauchenberg (DL/AL-145). My research on Hauchenberg however showed that the location in SOTA Maps for the summit and that shown on other maps was different and so I sent a note to the last activator – Herbert OE9HRV to ask his advice. Unfortunately I only received a reply on the day of activation, when we had already decided to play it safe and make Weichberg our second summit. Perhaps we’ll do Hauchenberg next time – it will require a lot of time to climb and we were limited on time as it turned out anyway.

Equipment from my side would be the usual FT-817 plus amplifier, 6 metre pole and linked dipole.

The Locations:

Blender is located quite a long way from my home QTH, west of Kempton and north of Buchenberg. After a small diversion to pick up Thomas en-route, we got there at around the planned time. I had hoped to go to a different location on the hill than my last activation of this summit a couple of years ago but it turned out that what is shown on open street maps as a road is not much larger than a footpath, so the road up to the radio tower was the route we ended up going on and parking before climbing the last (steep)  ascent and in fact going and finding a seat across the summit from the tower, (well within the activation zone).

Weichberg, near Rettenbach is a summit I know very well, it’s “almost” a local summit for me but this time we would be approaching it from the other side along the B472 road.

The Activation:

These were not to be quick activations. The weather was nice, we set up both Thomas’s and my equipment at Blender so that we could demonstrate and compare. This was the first time I had seem a KX2 from Elecraft – it is indeed a very nice (if expensive) piece of equipment. Most impressive is the ability of the built-in ATU to tune almost any antenna. Unfortunately the front end was not able to filter my transmissions on 40m out from the 20m band (we were very close after all). From my side, it was clear the extra power of the amplifier (35w on 40m) makes a difference when calling non-SOTA stations.

Although Thomas did work a couple of SOTA stations, as well as a few non-SOTA stations (so qualifying the summit) he was put off a little by the pile-ups. English is not Thomas’s first language and this combined with the speed of the contacts took a little away from the SOTA experience. I have suggested that we look at GMA next time, while this would be mostly in German and somewhat less hectic.

We had several interested people come by either on foot or on bikes and a few stopped to ask about the hobby. One I thought was an amateur as he knew about propagation and antennas, but it seems he was more of an SWL. In any case I gave him a brochure and he went off happy.

After about 90 minutes on Blender, we decided to pack up and head off for what I expected to be a 30-40 minute drive over to Weichberg.

The drive turned out to be almost an hour, which surprised me and restricted what we could do. We agreed to just take Thomas’s equipment up to the top of Weichberg and let him have a go without interference from my station. Thomas decided to use a different antenna this time and he tied a large nut to the end of some thin silver coated copper wire and threw it up over a convenient tree branch. Again the ATU in the KX2 amazed me that it could tune this random length of wire, but it did. How well the 10w from the KX2 radiated, I don’t know but reception was good, we could hear a station from the middle east as well as stations from all around Europe. The band conditions were very good this time out. Thomas worked a couple of special event stations in France and Germany as he likes to collect their QSL cards and then we decided to call it a day.

  After dropping Thomas off, I arrived home about 90 minutes later than I had planned. A good day out, but next time I need to check better how long the drive to, and between, the summits will take.

Photos – Blender:

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Photos – Weichberg:

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Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

SOTABeams Band Hopper Linked Dipole.

LambdaHalbe 6m Mini-mast.

Modified QAMP amplifier (35W on 40m, 25W on 20m).

Thick plastic painters sheet

Screw-in sun-umbrella base

Log Blender:Log Weichberg:

No log for DD5LP. DK1TK/P operation only.

Conclusions:

Although the GPS Navi only let me down once on this trip (en-route to Weichberg from Blender), I knew the suggested route was wrong (probably shorter but using farm roads) and was able to quickly correct the route. There are a few summits, not far from Blender that I have either never activated or not activated this year. I would like to go back to the area and combine two or three into a day. I MUST however check driving times very carefully and also plan for rapid installation and pack-up to fit them all in.

At the moment 40m is still the “money band” but 20 metres is getting better again. The luxury of a short antenna and speedy installation may have me using my 15/17/20m J-pole antennas again next time.

73 ’til the next Summit!

DD5LP/P – July 15th. 2017 – DM/BW-348 Gehrenberg (group activation).

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Preparation:

This activation was planned in conjunction with a trip to the HAM RADIO event in Friedrichshafen. After the last revision of the list of DM/BW summits, there is now only one practical summit near the HAM RADIO show which is Gehrenberg, a summit I have activated twice before.

The overall plan came together via the SOTA reflector and it was possible to build a “SOTA Day” for the Saturday of Friedrichshafen. This started with the regular 12 noon meet-up at the QSL wall followed by the afternoon lectures, then came the SOTA group activation and finally I also organised the (very well attended) SOTA dinner in the evening.

Equipment packed to support this group activation was my usual SOTA kit.

The Location:

Gehrenberg should be about a 45 minutes drive from the “Neue Messe” in Friedrichshafen, where the HAM RADIO event takes place. I was lucky enough also to find a restaurant for the dinner, not too far from the summit also, so things would not be to bad a drive for all taking part.

The Activation:

My in-car GPS is a couple of years old now but has just had new maps added and I was confident from previous outings that I could rely on it bringing me, and my two passengers (Gerard VK2IO and John VK6NU) to the summit without any problems. I was so wrong! The GPS Navi tried to take us first of all up a farm road that simply came to an end (I suspect there “may” have been a small track up to the back of the summit previously but it’s certainly not there now). After resetting our plans and looking at some on-line maps and asking some directions, we ended up at the Gehrenberg look-out tower. This however is NOT on the SOTA summit and hence another back-track was need and eventually, based on my memory of what some of the roads looked like from last time, we arrived at the parking spot about a kilometer from the summit, unpacked and started the walk up the forestry track, only to be passed by two other amateurs in their cars, who said there were no driving restriction signs. I had not checked, there were some signs the year before. In any case upon arrival, one group had gone to the absolute summit, so I decided to set-up in a spot by the radio transmitter tower, that I had used the last two years as I knew was well within the activation zone. This was a good hour and a half after leaving Friedrichshafen, so time was against us, if we were to get to the restaurant on-time.

A group of Czech Hams had walked further along the track, to be clear of the other stations. As we were setting up Juerg HB9BIN joined Gerard, John and I and we all shared my dipole antenna. We all managed the required 4 contacts, before pulling all the equipment down and heading back down the hill to the car.

Even though the activation was different from what I had planned – I had hoped to have two stations in place before the others arrived and have them simply rotate through to get their 4 contacts for the 8 point summit – it all worked out in the end and it was followed by a lovely evening with good food and chatter at the restaurant for the SOTA dinner, where Luc ON7DQ was awarded the prize of a WSPRLite unit for the most original SOTA clothing.

Photos:

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Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

SOTABeams band-hopper linked dipole.

LambdaHalbe 6m Mini-mast.

Thick plastic painters sheet.

Log:

Conclusions:

Do not assume the Navi is going to take you to the best access point for a summit, take printed maps as well.

I have already been asked if I will run something similar next year. I am considering it, but it would be nice to go to a different summit. That would however need a lot more time, so perhaps I’ll just organise the dinner as I have done, the last two years and leave the activation out of what was quite a busy day.

73 ’til the next Summit!

DD5LP/P – May 30th. 2017 – DL/EW-001 Wank.

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Preparation:

Wank is an easy access summit. As you will have seen from my earlier posts, I like summits that my wife can accompany me on and that means access with a cable car to a summit with a restaurant on it. This one has two restaurants on top of it. I was surprised to realise that the last time I activated Wank was in 2014. I have no idea how I missed this summit in 2015 and 2016. If you have read my last couple of reports, you’ll know that I have had problems with both of my HF dipole antennas. I managed to break the centre feed insulator on my SOTABeams Band Hopper linked dipole antenna and the wires coming out of both sides of the BALUN on my Aerial-51 404-UL OCF were frayed. Both antennas have been repaired and this activation will be used to test out the repaired antennas. I also still want to try to get some 2m SOTA contacts just using a HT with my new RH770 antenna, so I’ll be taking that along as well.

Looking back at my report from 2014, I saw that I had some problems finding somewhere to support my mast, so this time I decided to take my sun umbrella screw-in base with me with the hope of finding some softer ground.

The rest of the kit will be the usual FT-817ND plus my 25/35w amplifier and my 6m LambdaHalbe fibreglass mast and as noted above the Wouxun HT and antenna will also be packed.

The Location:

The Wank mountain is located above Garmish Partenkirchen on the Bavaria / Austria border about an hour and a quarter from my home QTH. The cable car takes about twenty minutes to get from the valley to the summit. Technically interesting is the fact that the 4-seat cabins actually run on two cable car systems changing from one to the other at the middle station. You don’t need to move from one car to another, the car changes over between the systems. So to reach the summit, stay in the car, don’t get out when the door opens at the middle station. From the mountain station (where the Sonnenalm panorama restaurant is located) it’s a short walk and about 40 metres climb up to the actual summit, where as well as the Wankhaus restaurant, there is also the Cross and several transmitter stations and their antennas. There’s actually an amateur radio repeater in one of these huts.

The Activation:

My in-car GPS is a couple of years old now and has reported non existent speed cameras around Garmish Partenkirchen the last couple of times I have driven through there, so I had updated the speed cameras file on the card and, even though I knew the route, I let the GPS Navi, tell me the way there and indeed, no more false warnings! I also tuned into the American Forces radio station (Garmish is one of the last remaining locations for the American forces in Germany, kept as a rest and recuperation resort in the most part for soldiers returning from conflicts before going home). It seems they have reduced their 90.3 MHz FM transmitter power down to 50 watts so that it only now covers the base and the town. Previously I could receive it from a lot further away than I can now (or perhaps VHF propagation was a lot better the last time I came through?). Interesting for a change in style of broadcasting compared to the German stations in any case.

The drive down was uneventful and thankfully, this being a week day, the cable car was not busy and I got a cabin to myself both for the trip up and down, allowing me to take some photos using my smart phone (see below). I arrived pretty well on schedule and sought out a spot on the very summit (although there is a large area within the activation zone if others come to activate on a busy day). Indeed here I found what I found last time – only brush wood – none of it strong enough to support the mast, so I took out the sun umbrella base and found some soil where I could screw it in, with enough room at each side to run the antenna out without it obstructing any of the paths. Although there are also some nice bench seats on the summit, none were near enough for the antenna lead, so I got out the trusty painters sheet (a thick PVC sheet) and put it down on the rough rocks and then pulled out and set up the rest of the gear.

Although this summit is high, it seems none of the towers are a cell phone repeater and Internet access was patchy. I tried both of my Networks, Deutche Telekom and Vodafone. I suspect the problem was, that being so close to the Austrian border, the phone was switching back and forwards between roaming mode to an Austrian phone network and my local cell networks.

My first transmit test unfortunately showed that my amplifier wasn’t going onto transmit. I use RF triggering, rather than a PTT line to switch the amplifier into circuit and at the time I thought that it could be something in this circuit that had failed. After getting everything home and taking a look inside the amplifier however I found the main fuse had blown, which is the past has been caused by one of the two push-pull power transistors shorting power to earth. I will need to confirm this and repair it before my next activation. For now however, on the summit, I took the amplifier out of circuit and packed it away, connecting the lead from the SOTABeams linked dipole antenna which I had put up, directly to the FT-817 and ran the whole activation at 5 watts. Even the unsuccessful (no calls) two metre part of the activation was at 5 watts as that’s what the Wouxun HT puts out on 145MHz. So this was a true QRP activation on all bands used.

Given that I made 26 contacts across 40m and 20m in about 45 minutes, I think even at only 5 watts I was still getting out, albeit some people were having more difficulty than usual in copying me.

As is often the case, I had one couple come up to me and ask what I was doing, they were interested to hear that our hobby and technology exists but I don’t think they will be looking any further into it. It was a nice short chat in any case.

The bottom half of the 40m band was full of interference, I suspect from one or more of the microwave transmitters on the summit. 20m was clear of interference and the easier band to operate this time around.

All in all a nice activation and at around 1pm local, I was already back in the cable car heading down the mountain, to both miss the forecast incoming storms (that never came) and also to be able to take care of some chores when I got home.

For those visiting southern Germany, this is a nice summit to visit, easy to activate and even nice for any non-radio people coming long. I certainly wont be waiting another 3 years before activating this summit again.

Photos:

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Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

Repaired SOTABeams band-hopper linked dipole.

LambdaHalbe 6m Mini-mast.

Modified QAMP amplifier (35W on 40m, 25W on 20m – when it’s working …).

Thick plastic painters sheet.

Sun Umbrella base.

Log:

Conclusions:

A nice activation weather wise, luckily the threatened storms never arrived.

The repaired SOTABeams band-hopper worked perfectly which is more than can be said for my amplifier but as long as the FT817 continues to work, even 5w gets out when there are a lot of chasers looking for you. The repaired Aerial-51 still needs testing, that’ll have to wait for the next activation.

Two metres was a disappointment again, despite this really great location. Sad but it seems 2m SOTA is not very popular in Southern Germany.

73 ’til the next Summit!

DD5LP/P – May 26th. 2017 – DM/BW-078 Römerstein & DM/BW-695 Teck.

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Preparation:

The original plan was to activate three summits in the BW region – the third being DM/BW-094 Kornberg, however after the second summit and a couple of problems, I decided to leave that one for another day.

The summits to be activated are 2 hours drive away from where I live and that’s only to the car parking spot from where I need to begin my walk. The walking up to the summit can take 20-30 minutes, so fitting three summits into a day when they are far away from home and about 30mins drive away from each other is a challenge.

I wanted to test out my new RH770 whip antenna on my 2m HT and so the first summit would need both VHF and HF equipment to be carried to the summit. I will be heading over to the UK later in the year and am considering just taking 2m FM to activate the last of 5 G/TW summits that I haven’t as yet activated.

In case conditions are not good on 2m (or the antenna doesn’t work) – I decided to be ready to run 20m & 40m as well on the summits. For this I would take my standard pack – FT817 plus amplifier and 6m. mast. This time however rather than the lighter SOTABeams Band Hopper linked dipole I would be relying on my Aerial-51 OCF antenna as I managed to break the centrepiece on the SOTABeams antenna and am awaiting a replacement piece to come in the post.

The Locations:

Römerstein (DM/BW-078) I have activated twice before and know the route up from the car park well – last time it was through mud but as we’ve had a few dry and sunny days, that would not be the case this time.

Teck (DM/BW-695) on the other hand is a new summit for me but from what I could see it’s a favourite tourist spot with a castle on the summit and a nice restaurant/beer garden as well. So it can’t be hard to walk the 2 kilometres up the track right…. Wrong the access track from the Hörnle car park, outside of the village of Owen,  up to the castle is long and quite steep. Not ideal for carrying heavy gear if it can be avoided…

The Activation – Römerstein:

The drive from home to Römerstein was fairly straight forward with the first 3/4 being autobahns – well apart from a total of about 20 Km of road work sections with no overtaking and 60 KPH speed limits… What was quite strange was that the GPS Navi told me to exit the Autobahn using a “Behilfsausfahrt” – i.e. not a road to a particular town or village but one that is used to release traffic should the Autobahn be blocked. As it turned out, this was the quickest route to the area around the summit and I quickly spotted my normal parking area on the side of the road. After packing what I thought I would need into two bags, I started off up the track through the forest to the summit.

As I approached the summit I could see the tower was open for visitors and some people were there cleaning up around it. The “Römerstein Turm” is normally open only on weekends in summer and public holidays so I was surprised to find it open on a Friday. I thought I might take a look from the top of the tower once I had finished my activation, but that didn’t happen as during my activation about 30 young adults appeared and started various activities, including inspecting the tower. As I started to set up the mast and equipment, one of the people there, who was, in fact, one of the custodians of the tower, came across and said why not operate from the top of the tower. He would be quite OK with me dropping a wire out of a window down the outside wall! Unfortunately I didn’t have my end-fed antenna with me and trying to rig a dipole from there would have taken too long. So I thanked him and continued to set up at ground level.

I had brought my 2m FM HT along as well to test but as I saw a couple of activators already spotted, it would need to wait until I saw if I could manage some S2S contacts. This was not to be but while tuning on 40m I heard someone with a strong signal calling CQ and getting no answers so I gave Ray PD7DX a call and we had a short chat. I then looked around for a free frequency spotted myself and started calling CQ. The band was strange, with very deep QSB and some stations sounding like there were in a motorboat. Whether this was an effect of the fast solar winds which were hitting the earth at the time, I don’t know, but it was strange.

After the calls dried up after 20 contacts on 40 metres, I decided I’d better try two metres, it being one of the reasons that I was activating the summit. I wanted to see if my Wouxun with the RH770 antenna performed as well as others have said. I was hoping to get a contact and then swap the antenna back to the standard one and see what difference (if any) it made on receive and transmit. After self-spotting and calling on the 2m FM calling frequency on and off for 4 minutes, I got absolutely no contacts on 2 metres FM. By this point the 30 youngsters had appeared and had started a football match near to where I was rather than on the sports field – they were just having fun, but before one of them ran into the dipole wire, I decided it was time to start wrapping up. As I had alerted that I would also operate on 20m, I switched over, spotted and called. In twelve minutes, I only managed two contacts – thanks to Terry G0VWP and Jim EI9GLB. The 20m band was even more strange than 40m, the normal background (atmospheric) noise simply wasn’t there.

While packing up, I noticed on the 404-UL that the dipole wire, just as it exited the BALUN box was frayed – the outer sheath had completely gone and the wire itself was having to take the full load. I taped this up to give some strength to it, so that it wouldn’t break in transit. I consider calling off the next summit as I had no back-up antenna with me but decided to go ahead. At the same time one of my mini-wire winding coils (usually used for earphone cable for smartphone headset), fell apart and the dipole wire was everywhere and tangled up. I took time to untangle it best I could and did a quick repair to the coiling loop to get me to the next summit, think in the worst case if this happened again when packing up at Teck, I would just “bundle” the antenna wire into my rucksack and sort everything out at home. At this point, I made the final decision not to try to activate the third summit (Kornberg). There were simply too many things that might not work after the quite long walk to that summit.

The Activation – Teck:

After walking back down to the car and bundling everything in I set the GPS Navi to take me to Teck which is not far from Römerstein near to the village of Owen and should take just about 20 minutes to drive from car park to car park. As I had only packed limited food and as now, that I had decided not to activate the third summit, I had time to stop at a supermarket and pick up some drink and food supplies. Even with the supermarket stop, the journey still only took just over 30 minutes.

The route to Burg Teck (Castle Teck) is well signposted when you get into Owen. In fact, you are guided to the car park on “Hornle” hill whereas it turned out, the local model glider club were having a competition, launching their model aircraft off the side of the hill down a grassy slope.

I had looked at this route on the map and although there is a closer car park, the track from that one is much steeper and this one turned out to be more than steep enough itself. It appears the track between the castle and the car park is a favourite track for mountain bikers with several pushing (and puffing) their way up the track with me to the summit, where they would most likely grab a cool drink in the beer garden before hurtling back down the track.

The track seemed to go on FOREVER! But eventually, as I turned around another corner after a steep section, there was the castle gates (and a lot of people taking photos and resting). I snapped a couple of shots on my smartphone camera and continued through the gates (which also have public toilets in the sidewalls of the entrance). I continued on, past the restaurant and beer garden on the right, into a kind of parkland area and after surveying possibilities decided I could use a bench in the middle and run out the dipole without causing danger to others. While setting up, I saw the gardener fighting to get an old petrol power lawn mower to start, which he did finally manage. I hoped he wasn’t going to want to cut the grass where I had my antenna up. I had been able to throw the cords on the end of the dipole over some tree branches and when the mast was raised, the wire was high enough for people to walk (or ride) under without catching it.

At this point, the gardener came over to see what I was doing and it turned out he was from Serbia and had been a member of an Amateur Radio / CB club there when he was younger. In fact, the club had acted as a civil warning method for bombing during their war. By warning people where bombs were being dropped, to keep away from those areas. Interesting guy!

Once set up, I checked what was spotted and bagged two Summit-to-Summit contacts straight away before spotting myself and calling. The bands were still strange, with 20m very quiet – in fact, I wondered at this point whether the wire had either broken or frayed further since I took it down at Römerstein, despite the tape I had put on it. This was not the case and the antenna got repaired (the wire at both sides of the BALUN were fraying) once I got home.

So as not to disturb the ever-increasing number of tourists arriving at the summit, I “donned” my headphones and managed a total of sixteen contacts in 35 minutes on 20 & 40 metres. I didn’t bother with any 2-metre tests from this summit given the lack of contacts from the last one and the worry that the HF antenna could fail at any time. I also had a 20-minute walk down to the car and a 2-hour drive back home to look forward to, so I closed down the stations at 1100 UTC, 1PM local, packed up, said goodbye to the young lady and her horse who had joined me on the other end of the table and set off back down to the car park.

I’m sure it took less time to get down the track than come up it, however, one had to be careful on the gravelly surface not to slip, especially while carrying probably 8 kilograms or more of gear. The drive back home to a similar route to the one coming, including all of the road works on the Autobahns and I arrived back home at around 15:30 local time. I was glad that I decided not to go on to the third summit as I was somewhat exhausted and if I had gone on, I would have been driving back in peak hour traffic.

 

I am going to look at combining Kornberg and Wasserberg, two other summits in this same “Schwabische Alpen” area at some point in the near future.  Those 10, 8 and 6 pointers are very attractive when one is used to 1, 2 and 4 pointers that are harder to climb! If only they weren’t so far away from where I live.

Photos – Römerstein:

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Photos – Teck:

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Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

Aerial-51 OCF wire dipole antenna.

LambdaHalbe 6m Mini-mast.

Modified QAMP amplifier (35W on 40m, 25W on 20m).

Wouxun KG-UVD1P HT with RH770 antenna

Log Römerstein:

Log Teck:

Conclusions:

It’s always advisable to have a back-up for everything. While the antenna didn’t fail, it could so easily have done so. If I had, had an end-fed antenna (and tuner) with me that could have been a nice experiment from the top of the Römerstein Tower!

Planning to activate 3 summits in one day, so far away from home is only sensible if I have already activated all of them before and know what to expect. While it is very tempting, given the far higher points allocated for these relatively easy summits, the drive to and from them takes a lot of time and effort, from where I live.

73 ’til the next Summit!

DD5LP/P – May 17th. 2017 – DL/AM-060 Laber.

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Preparation:

Having missed the EU-NA S2S event the previous Saturday because of feeling ill, I wanted to get out and activate a summit while the weather stays nice. I decided to try 60 metres again along with 40 metres as a back up. So the modified for 60m SOTABeams linked dipole along with the FT-817 and amplifier (for 40 metres usage – 60m would be barefoot 5 watts PEP).

The Location:

Laber is about an hours drive from my home QTH – to the valley station of the cable car in the village of Oberammergau (famous for its “Passion play” that has been held every 10 years for several hundred years). The cable car is the oldest in Germany at over 60 years old and takes about 10 minutes to reach the summit.

From the mountain station of the cable car it’s only about 30 metres walk to the very summit with its convenient bench seat.

The Activation:

All went to plan except squeezing the antenna into the available space with the extra length for 60m while there are other people on the summit. This meant I got started about 15 minutes later than planned. I started on 60 metres using frequencies that overlap between the UK “bandlets” and the IARU WRC15 allocation that we have in Germany. The band did not cooperate – perhaps the antenna was not good with the ends on 60m relatively close to the ground. In any case I only managed contacts into Germany and Switzerland – locals from where I was.

After switching to 40 metres things were better and I actually called a non SOTA station first, this was PI4C at a museum near Schipol Airport in Holland. It was being operated by Trevor a British ex-pat in Holland who came originally from a town about 10 miles away from where I lived as a child! Small world! Band conditions on 40m were variable, some of the usual chasers being weaker than normal and some the normal strength. At the end of my activation I could hear the lightning strikes that had been reported earlier by some UK stations, but in the end the storm never got to me thankfully. As the winds were increasing I decided to shut down and pack up after about an hour in the hot sun. While closing down someone came to ask what I was doing and he seemed quite interested, so I gave him a DARC introduction brochure to Amateur radio. In my rush now to pack away, I managed to break the central insulator/feed-point plastic of the antenna so that will have to be replaced or repaired. It’s lasted 5 years of some quite rough handling, so it as done well.

All in all, I was happy that I got out and did an activation in the nice weather – can you believe in a few days snow is forecast again for the summit (and this is the middle of May!).

Photos:

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Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

60/40/30/20m Linked dipole antenna (Modified SOTABeams Band Hopper).

LambdaHalbe 6m Mini-mast.

Modified QAMP amplifier (35 watts on 40m).

Log:

Conclusions:

The location is not a good one for 60 metres due to the restricted space for the dipole.

I need to look at the compression level in the FT-817 Mic RF-Speech-Clipper and back it off a little.

The output BNC socket on the amplifier needs to be tightened and locked (glued) in place before its turning breaks the cable.

The centre insulator on the dipole needs to be repaired or replaced.

73 ’til the next Summit!