AL-179 Weichberg.

Posted on 18/10/2016 by VK2JI DD5LP G8GLM

Preparation:

With the planned EU-VK S2S SOTA event set for Saturday October 22nd, I wanted to test a new antenna that I built from information given on the SOTA reflector. A 20m halfwave, coax fed end-fed vertical. This antenna has no BALUN/UNUN or ACU, it uses a quarter wave stub to match the 2.5K ohm of the end of the half wave to the 50 ohms needed by the rig.I tested the antenna on my antenna analyser and was very happy with the results:

The results on the Analyser after building to the dimensions from the spreadsheet –

Resonant frequency 14.285 MHz (as required by me for SSB operation),
SWR 1.42:1
IZI = 52.4 ohms
R = 49.4 ohms
X = -17.4 ohms
C = 634 pf.

Very impressive for an end-fed simply cut and soldered – no trimming at all was necessary!

Now I needed to test the antenna in the real world and decided on an activation of DL/AL-179 Weichberg as I knew I had the choice of vertical supports to strap the 10 metre mini-mast to.

Equipment would be the 817, the amp, the 10m mast and the new antenna.

The Location:

Weichberg is about 45 minutes drive from where I live and as such one of the closest summits to my home. It is only a 1 pointer however relatively easy to get to – about 10 minutes walk up a forest track from where I park the car. Navigate to Rettenbach and then follow the road “Dolce” as far as you are allowed to drive and there is a parking spot for 4 cars and the track to the summit is across the track behind you.

The Activation:

Subtitle – Wet hands make sloppy installations!

The trip down to Weichberg was uneventful except for a diversion through a beautiful small village because one of the main junctions on my route is being repaired/upgraded. The further south I drove, the heavier the rain became, until I turned off the main road onto the small road to Rettenbach when it started to clear. By the time I got to the parking spot it was down to a light drizzle, at this rate this is going to work out! I thought. …

I walked up the track through the forest to the summit and into increasing rain – never mind, I’m here now, let’s get busy! I unloaded my two rucksacks and started attaching the 10m mast to the best vertical post available – the holy cross outside if the small chapel. With hands getting wetter and colder I stretched my first “Double Bongo Strap” around the post and just as I was about to interlock the bongo in the rubber band – “TWANG” – it was gone and no amount of searching would find it! OK, have to make do with just one double Bongo Strap, that went on OK and then I unrolled the 1/2 wave 20m coax fed vertical antenna across the ground, attached it’s crocodile clip to the top section of the mast and started winding the thin wire around the fibreglass pole as I raised it section by section. Slowly but surely the antenna was raised. By this time the rain had become heavy but I thought there’s no point stopping now as I’m soaked anyway. The rain had started coming through the sleeves of my so called waterproof winter jacket.

Once I had the antenna raised, I went back to the small table on this summit where I assembled the FT817 and amplifier, connected batteries and turned everything on. 20m sounded quite busy which was a good sign. I checked 14.285 which appeared free, put out a call to check and then started calling CQ. In parallel I tried to place a spot but with water running over the face of the smart phone, it was difficult to type anything in! Then someone called – QRZ? So I went back a couple of times but the caller said they had too much QRM from a station 2 KHz down so I announced I would QSY up to 14.290, which I did and started calling again. About this time I got the first spot out but the call that came back on 14.290 was from someone who had just heard me calling rather than a SOTA chaser and I had a nice, if short, QSO with Panna from near Athens in Greece. We exchanged 5-9 and 5-5 reports – so the antenna was certainly working.

I started to put out another CQ hoping for a SOTA chaser who would have seen my spot but just at this time there was a loud “CLUNK” behind me and the fibreglass mast had telescoped itself down to ground. This was probably just one junction that I didn’t pull out enough with the cold, wet hands as there was next to no weight on the mast.

I took a look and while the mast and antenna were not broken, the antenna had tied itself in so many knots that it would take me 10 minutes to un-taffle it in good weather with non-frozen hands. As I was finding more areas of my jacket where the, now heavy, rain was coming through, I decided to pull the plug and pack up and head back to the car and its heater to dry me out.

To add insult to injury, by the time I arrived home, the rain had stopped completely but the TV said there are banks of rain storms coming through.

Despite aborting the activation (it counts as an activation as I had one contact, and as activated this summit earlier in 2016, I would not get any activation points in any case if I had “qualified” it with 4 contacts) it was still a useful exercise. I now know the antenna works. I know to take more care “locking” each section of the mast in place. I have already found a replacement “Double Bongo Strap” that was holding some other antenna and it’s coax together. If anyone finds the strap on Weichberg – they’re welcome to it. Who knows perhaps I’ll find it there next year but searching for it longer in the grey, rainy environment today was pointless.

I will take both my usual dipole and this new antenna on Saturday for the VK-EU S2S party. I’ll decide which to use on the day – if Long Path to VK doesn’t look good I’ll need the 40 metre capability of the dipole to contact EU stations but the vertical up first to give it a good “go”.

All parts are currently drying out and I’ll most likely untaffle the antenna while watching the TV this evening!

One amusing point is that I found the Trig Point stone on this summit as well. In fact there were three stones(see pictures) – the two with metal tops I suspect might be used for mounting the measuring instruments.

Photos:

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Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

Modified Ramsey power amplifier.

CO-AX fed half-wave end-fed 20m vertical.

DX-Wire 10metre “Mini-Mast”.

Thick plastic painters sheet

Log:

Conclusions:

The antenna worked. I would have liked to have more reports from different directions and distances but in the weather, I was glad that I managed the one contact. I know to be mre careful with this mast now, making sure each section “locks-in”. This appears to be more of a problem on the DX-Wire mast than on the cheap “Lambda-Halbe” one!

73 ’til the next Summit!

DD5LP/P – September 22nd. 2016 DL/KW-008 Westlische Karwendelspitz.

Posted on 25/09/2016 by VK2JI DD5LP G8GLM

Preparation:

As I am planning a trip over to the UK I needed to check out my “one bag” kit configuration and I had long wanted to activate Karwendelspitze as it is a ten pointer. In fact initially it was a 20 pointer up until the end of 2015 when it’s Austrian SOTA Summit code was removed. An action, I personally do not agree with. I believe those summit who sit on a country border should be allocated a code in each country, making them more attractive to activate for both activators and chasers. In any case many (not yet all) dual summits have been removed by the MT.

I had also considered activating this summit in winter to gain the winter bonus as well. I’m glad I didn’t as it turns out this summit is a difficult climb despite what several articles on the web say. With snow and ice around, this would be a dangerous summit to activate, for someone without mountaineering skills.

In any case, all equipment that was expected to be needed was packed into one standard rucksack. I actually find the camera bag a much more suitable bag however it only has a shoulder strap and climbing with that would be hard or even dangerous, with it rocking around.

The Location:

The Karwendel mountains are on the German/Austrian border and some (including the Western Karwendelstein) are accessed from the village of Mittenwald from the German side. Mittenwald is located on one of the main routes from Germany to Austria, the one that goes through Garmish Partenkirchen (which itself has a couple of SOTA summits in Wank and Zugspitze). The roads are not large and hence can become blocked with traffic at times but normally mid-week as this activation was, there should be no big problems.

From what I had read after you take the 10-15 minute ride up in the cable car, it’s a 20 or 25 minute walk to the summit. I’m not sure who wrote these reports however even the sign when you come out of the mountain station of the cable car, says the ascent to the summit is 45 minutes, so allow more time. I think it took me 30 minutes but I was pushing on a bit.

The Activation:

The trip down to Mittenwald was uneventful some traffic delays but nothing too bad and on the way down the morning fog slowly cleared and it turned into a nice sunny day. This was officially the first day of Autumn.

When I turned into the cable car valley station’s car park however my timing expectations dropped – there was a long queue running out of the building. As this was the first nice day for a while a lot of other people had also decided to visit the mountain, some with their dogs, large and small.

Once I found a parking spot, I went and joined the end of the queue only to find out 15 minutes later, (by which time the queue had grown even longer) that there was a separate queue to buy tickets and this was the queue to board the cable car once you had tickets. Luckily the lady behind me said she would save my place and off I went to the (thankfully shorter) ticket queue. Well surprise, surprise, a 50% price increase over the previous year AND a € 2,50 charge for the car park. This was probably financially a very good day for the cable car owners!

When I eventually got into the cable car, about an hour after arriving at the station, it took about 12 minutes to the mountain station with some fantastic views on the way up. Unfortunately as the car was packed as full as possible, there was no room for me to get my camera out of the bottom of my rucksack to grab some pictures. I thought I’d do so on the way back down but then I was so tired and not in a good position to see out as well as the car being packed full again.

On reaching the top station, the various options are well sign posted, so I set off straight away in the direction of the summit. The first part is an easy zig-zag walk up a track. This track is a little thin in places with steep gravel sides, so care was needed when people came the other way. Most people seemed to head up this track and then on around the mountain using the panorama way taking them back to the cable car station. At one corner of this track there were two smaller tracks one to the summit via a “kletter steig” where climbing gear would be needed and one to the summit via a longer, but not as mountainous route, which I took. This now smaller, track took me back across the face of the mountain to above the cable car station and then ziged back again as I moved up the mountain. Luckily I was the only person on this part of the track as passing here would be even more difficult than before. The last third of the climb however was over rock boulders, and up small water gullies that needed some sure footed work. I had put my hiking boots on at the car. At this point I wished I had my normal sports shoes on as they would have given me some more feeling when the stones were lose, which some were. This climb, now literally on the side of the rock face had a metal cable to hold onto to help with climbing. This is great until someone is coming down and you need to find a small spot to balance on without the rope, to let them pass (I had 6 kilos of gear, food and water on my back at this time). This climb seemed to go on and on and get steeper and steeper. I eventually saw the summit which was good as I was about to consider the climb too hard and turn around. Seeing the summit I decided that since I had got this far, I would manage the last part as well, and then worry later about how I would get down.

Despite the difficulty of the climb (to my standards) there were plenty of people already at the summit and while I was there many more (some with their dogs!) arrived as well, so I knew I could not set-up on the summit itself but about 10 metres below the summit there is, off to the side, what I call a small picnic area of about 6 square metres. Enough room to put out a blanket and several people could enjoy a picnic without being to dangerously close to the edge of the about 1000 metre sheer drops. So that is where I decided to set up. I crawled under the guide rope and put my rucksack down and stopped for a rest and a drink of water.

Unfortunately there was no easy way to support my fibreglass mast and I ended up leaning it against some rocks which sort of formed a wall between the path up the mountain and my “picnic area”. I found a large stone and leant it and my rucksack against the bottom of my mast. This was not very stable and so I could only extend the mast to about 2.5 metres high. On top of the mast I put my SOTABeams linked dipole and only rolled this out to just past the 20 metre links, tieing the next sections of antenna wire around some rocks at each side of the “picnic area”. Those rocks were as close as I wanted to get to the edge! Note to others planning to activate this summit – if you have a tripod supported antenna – that would be a better choice. So the antenna was somewhat compromised to say the least! I had brought my small amplifier with me, so I connected that up with the FT-817 to the antenna. Output power on 20 metres would have been around 20 watts. I was now over an hour late on my alerted activation time (but I had been spotting updates as the various delays occurred) and was wondering whether after all the effort, I would manage 4 contacts to get my 10 activator points for the summit. While with a better antenna set-up I am sure I would have had far more contacts, I was very happy with the eight which I got.

Karl M3FEH from the UK was first in the log, followed by calls from Belarus, the UK, Greece, the UK, Spain, Portugal and finally Central Norway. (Log is shown below). All of these contacts came in within 15 minutes of starting up. After that I tried for a further 5 minutes without any additional contacts so I decided to pack up and face the trip back down the mountain before it got any busier or hotter (and before I could think about it any more).

I am happy to report that I managed the trip down the mountain face, despite the highly polished stones caused by people sliding down on their bottoms – something that I reverted to on a couple of occasions as well. I got back to the cable car station just as my legs started to feel like rubber. I’m sure knowing now what I do about this summit, the next time I activate it, I will have less problems but it has taught me once more not to believe what hikers report as being an easy summit to always be so.

Things could have been very different if it had been a rainy day – I would not have even tried the climb to the summit, so (for me at least) this is a “fair weather summit”.

Photos:

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Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

Modified Ramsey power amplifier.

SOTABeams Linked dipole

Thick plastic painters sheet

Log:

Conclusions:

The equipment worked well considering the compromised antenna. If I had known the situation with the space available, I probably would have taken my tripod mounted vertical antenna instead of the dipole however. I’m sure using the amplifier helped get over some of the disadvantage however it was also extra weight to carry, which would have perhaps been better avoided.

73 ’til the next Summit!

DD5LP/P – August 16th. 2016 – DM/BW-078 Römerstein & DM/BW-484 Bussen.

Posted on 17/08/2016 by VK2JI DD5LP G8GLM

Preparation:

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

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

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

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

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

The Locations:

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

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

The Activation:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photos:

Römerstein:

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Bussen:

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Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

Highly modified Ramsey amplifier

SOTABeams linked dipole.

6 metre portable squid pole.

Logs:

DM/BW-078 Römerstein:

DM/BW-484 Bussen:

Conclusions:

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

73 ’til the next Summit!

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

Posted on 11/08/2016 by VK2JI DD5LP G8GLM

Preparation:

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

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

The Location:

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

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

The Activation:

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

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

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

Photos:

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Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

PAR antennas 2m Moxon beam.

Short aluminium “holding” pole.

Log:

Conclusions:

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

73 ’til the next Summit!

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

Posted on 18/06/2016 by VK2JI DD5LP G8GLM

Preparation:

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

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

The Location:

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

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

The Activation:

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

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

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

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

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

Photos:

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Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

SOTABeams linked dipole.

5 metre squid pole.

Log:

Conclusions:

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

73 ’til the next Summit!

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

Posted on 26/05/2016 by VK2JI DD5LP G8GLM

Preparation.

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

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

The Location:

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

The Activation.

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

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

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

Photos:

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Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

SOTABeams Band Hopper linked dipole.

5 metre squid pole.

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

Log:

Conclusions:

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

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

73 ’til the next Summit!

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

Posted on 19/05/2016 by VK2JI DD5LP G8GLM

Preparation for May 18th:

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

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

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

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

Preparation for May 23rd:

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

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

The Location:

The Activation May 18th:

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

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

The Activation May 23rd:

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

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

Photos 18th. May:

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Photos 23rd. May:

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Equipment (both activations):

Yaesu FT817ND.

SOTABeams Band Hopper linked dipole.

5 metre squid pole.

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

Log 18th. May:

Log 23rd. May:

Conclusions:

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

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

73 ’til the next Summit!

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

Posted on 22/04/2016 by VK2JI DD5LP G8GLM

Preparation:

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

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

The Location:

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

The Activation:

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

Photos:

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Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

Drastically shortened 80m dipole.

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

5 metre squid pole.

Ramsey QAMP 80 through 15m amplifier and batteries

Log:

Conclusions:

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

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

73 ’til the next Summit!

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

Posted on 29/03/2016 by VK2JI DD5LP G8GLM

Preparation:

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

The Location:

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

The Activation:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photos:

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Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

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

10 metre DX-Wire mini-mast.

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

Log:

Conclusions:

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

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

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

73 ’til the next Summit!

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

Posted on 19/03/2016 by VK2JI DD5LP G8GLM

Preparation:

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

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

The Location:

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

The Activation:

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

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

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

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

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

Photos:

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Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

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

5 metre squid pole.

Ramsey QAMP 20/40m amplifier

Log:

Conclusions:

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

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

73 ’til the next Summit!