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

Posted on by

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:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

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:

Activator 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 by

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:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

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:

Activator 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 by

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:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

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

5 metre squid pole.

Ramsey QAMP 20/40m amplifier

Log:

Activator logConclusions:

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

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

73 ’til the next Summit!

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

Posted on by

Preparation

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

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

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

The Locations:

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

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

The Activations:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photos:

G/TW-005 Normanby Top.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

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

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

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

5 metre squid pole.

Logs:

G/TW-005 Normanby Top.

Activator LogG/TW-001 Urra Moor (Round Hill).

Activator LogConclusions:

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

73 ’til the next Summit!

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

Posted on by

Preparation:

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

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

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

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

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

The Locations:

Peissenberg – DL/AM-001

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

Ammerleite – DL/AM-178

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

Kirnberg – DL/AM-177

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

Auerberg DL/AL-169

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

Weichberg DL/AL-179.

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

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

The Activation:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photos:

DL/AM-001 Peissenberg.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

DL/AM-178 Ammerleite.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

DL/AM-177 Kirnberg.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

DL/AL-169 Auerberg.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

DL/AL-179 Weichberg.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

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

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

Log:

DL/AM-001 Peissenberg.

Activator Log  DL/AM-178 Ammerleite.

Activator Log  DL/AM-177 Kirnberg.

Activator Log  DL/AL-169 Auerberg.

Activator Log  DL/AL-179 Weichberg.

Activator LogConclusions:

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

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

DD5LP/P – January 26th. 2016 – DL/AM-001 Peissenberg.

Posted on by

Preparation:

January 26th. is Australia Day. One of the three days in the year when VK stations can change their calls to start with AX rather than VK (the other two days are Anzac day and International telecommunications day). As John VK6NU had said he would be out late enough VK-Time (late afternoon) to hopefully catch some long-path contacts into Europe, I decided to go out to a local summit (early morning here in Germany) to try for an S2S contact back to Australia.

I managed to complete the move of my Ramsey QAMP from it’s flimsey plastic case into a die-cast aluminium case the day before and testing it, it actually still worked apart from the fact that the power LED that I had added didn’t light up (swapped its leads around and even that then worked!).

I had made contacts both to chasers and activators via long path from DL/AM-001 before, but not at this time of year. In any case, if you don’t try you’ll never know.

I also hoped to get some 10 metre contacts for the current challenge as no one has activated this summit on 10m before.

The Location:

Peissenberg is a drive-up summit with about 300 metres from the car park to walk to my comfortable operating position. I have been to the summit on several occasions before so I needed no map to find it. The views are fantastic, especially early morning and with the luxury of toilets on-site this would be an ideal summit for someone new to SOTA to have as their first summit activation. In my case it’s one of a few summits that are less than an hours drive away from home and as such suitable for early morning activations.

The Activation:

After a non-eventful drive down, I started to set-up my gear on the usual bench and strapped the 5m fibreglass mast to the railings as normal using “Bongo-ties” (these are great things – rubber bands with a small wooden toggle on them (that looks like a miniature bongo drum, hence the name)) so that you simply wrap them around objects and clip the ends back into each other. You can of course tie two together to get extra length, which I have done. While sorting out the rig and log book I suddenly saw the mast tipping over as one of the ties had released itself and fired off down the mountain, never to be seen again. I normally have a spare with me but could not find it, so I then had to re-arrange the base of the mast so that it would be held sufficiently well with just one double bongo-tie. With that problem sorted I started to unwind the dipole sides and the small spool that I use to wind the wires on fell apart and in the process knotted up the wire and cord. This of course took a little while to untangle sufficiently for me to be able to install the antenna. The day was not starting well and all of this in under zero degrees temperatures my fingers were already feeling frozen.

Despite these  couple of problems, I got on air at my alerted time and started putting out a CQ on 10 metres and self-spotted. Nothing! I tried for 15 minutes, still nothing, so I moved to 20m put the amp in circuit and started calling there – again no replies. I wondered if the antenna was simply not working, but the SWR looked OK. I tuned around and found a Swedish station activating a WWFF park, so gave him a call, got through and got a report – so I was getting out! Some more tries and spotting on both 10m and 20m resulted in one chaser call on 20m. I then saw the spot for John VK6NU in Australia but couldn’t hear a thing from him. The conditions on both 20m and 10m were horrible. So in order to at least qualify the summit, I moved to 40m and the difference was immediate – pile-ups despite the fact that Peissenberg is only a 1 point summit, it seemed the whole world (or at least all of Europe) wanted a contact with it!

So at the end of the day a successful normal activation, unfortunately with no VK or 10m contacts though. Better luck next time?

At least the QAMP worked without issues in the field!

Photos:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

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

5 metre squid pole.

Ramsey QAMP 20/40m amplifier

Log:

Activator log

Conclusions:

Unlucky with the 10m and 20m band conditions (10m improved later in the day).

January is not the month to try for Long Path SSB contacts into VK.

73 ’til the next Summit!

DD5LP/P – December 31th. 2015 – DL/AM-178 Ammerleite.

Posted on by

Preparation:

My attempt to activate Ammerleite earlier in the year had been stopped by the road being blocked by a farmer moving his crops and I was told that the road that I had used three times before was private and I could not access it. This is despite Google and other mapping systems reporting it as a public road. As always in SOTA, we have to avoid causing issues especially around access routes, so I have been researching an alternate access route from the other side of Schnalz (which is the correct name for the Summit – Ammerleite is the complete area). There is even a road called Schnalzstrasse that comes out of the village of Böbing, that the summit overlooks.

Even with the new route, I did not consider it too difficult and indeed my wife agreed to come along as well.

The Location:

The new route:

As noted above, there is a road named SchnalzStrasse on the western end of the village of Böbing. Take this road until you leave the village and come to a junction – now take Leitner Strasse (the direction being up the hill). If I remember correctly, the walking trails are also signposted from this point onwards – you need to follow B7 which on some signs is called Schnalz Gipfel or Schnalzrundgang or similar. Driving further up Leitner Strasse you come to a Y junction where the left fork has the sign saying that access past this point is restricted to farming and forestry workers only. This is just past where there is a small fountain on the left that has a horses head in wood as its spout (water not for human consumption). There is also a hut on this junction (see photos in slideshow below), I drove down the right hand fork and parked on the grass (later others had done the same, so this seems to be the acceptable point to park and start walking). Now it is simply a matter of taking the left hand fork, following the route B7 up the ever steeper hill and around the corner until you go through a stile into an open field. The opposite side of the field has a turnstile and after you go through that you can just see the cross through the trees up and to your left. This is where you need to head to, to take advantage of the two benches and fence posts to locate your radio gear.

SchnalzThe Activation:

Once I had put the antenna up, and laid out the rig and log, I found a faulty contact on the coax from the antenna but was able to position it so that it was connecting (after investigation at home, it was the inner core of the coax that had broken away from the centre pin of the BNC plug). I also noticed that although the SWR was now fine, the power out indication seemed low. I then realised that I had the FT817 switched to 2.5w rather than 5w output for all of the last activation on Herzogstand!

I tuned around the bottom 1MHz of 10m and apart for the DL0IGI beacon on 28.2050 on Peissenberg being off the scale on the FT817 (I could see the antennas from my summit) there was nothing on except for some interference, presumably from equipment not meant to be on 28MHz at all (I suspect the weather station – which was also very close – but I can’t prove this) – there was NOTHING on the band that I could hear. So I tried spotting myself and putting out CQs for about 10 minutes but to no avail. The band was totally dead!

Never mind, now I know the “authorised” access route I can try again in the new year, bag the activator points again and hopefully some 10m contact points as well for the challenge.

I then decided to try 20m, where the results were far better with 15 contacts in 12 minutes. I followed this with a stint on 40m and bagged another 12 contacts in 12 minutes. On both 20m and 40m I was still just running the 5w from the FT-817 into the OCF dipole. I didn’t unpack and set up the amp as I could see a storm coming in. Indeed just as I stopped operating, the first few rain drops fell. A quick pack away and head down the hill and when we reached the car the rain storm really started.

The activation was completed with a stop for soup in a nice cafe in Rottenbuch on the way home.

Photos:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

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

5 metre squid pole.

Ramsey QAMP 20/40m amplifier and batteries (taken but not used)

Log:

Activator log

Conclusions:

Unlucky with the 10m band conditions (they improved later in the day), but lucky to get down and away before the storm came through. Although somewhat further and a lot steeper, this access route appears to be, by all of the signposts, the way that the locals want you to approach Ammerleite – or we should now say Schnalz.

73 ’til the next Summit!

DD5LP/P – December 29th. 2015 – DL/EW-022 Herzogstand.

Posted on by

Preparation:

I’ve had Herzogstand on my “to do” list for a while. It is a relatively easy climb and attracts a large number of walkers, so I expected that I would be limited on space to put up an antenna and so packed the loaded vertical and all other equipment into one rucksack. I was hoping to add it to my activated on 10m, summits list and hence receive another multiplier point for the current 10m/6m SOTA challenge.

The Location:

Herzogstand is a mountain above Walchensee in Southern Bavaria, access is via a cable car to the neighbouring mountain (Fahrenberg) from where it’s a ten minute walk to the Herzogstand Gasthaus (Restaurant) and then one takes the track along the side of Martinskopf mountain to the start of the serpentine track up to first the holy cross and then the pavilion on the very top of Herzogstand. Expected time from the restaurant to the summit is 45 minutes.

The Activation:

My journey to the summit from getting in the cable car to arriving at the summit took me 40 minutes. It probably would have been five minutes quicker except for the number of other walkers on the (partly iced over) track up (I’m glad I took my spikes to add to my hiking boots!), Once I reached the summit, after pausing and taking some photos at the cross,  I saw an area next to the pavilion that had once been some kind of small building but all that remained were it’s foundations (about 6 foot by 4 foot). OK for me – I set up the tripod and loaded whip in one corner and ran the counterpoise wire out along the top of one pf the partially remaining walls. I did not add any extension to the top of the whip on this activation as I was restricted for space as to where I would run it and my main aim was for contacts on 10m where I don’t need the extension. Putting down my plastic painting sheet in the opposite corner of the fountations from where I had put the antenna up, I put the rig and logbook on it, took off my skiing jacket (it was warm on the summit in my sheltered position, but cold when one was in the wind) and got ready to start some SOTA action. I immediately started calling CQ SOTA on 10 metres on 28.370 after checking the frequency was clear. I then spotted myself but to no avail. After about 15 minutes, I decided it was better to activate the summit anyway, even if I could not get a 10m contact, so I adjusted the vertical antenna to 20m and called CQ there where I got a quick response from many of the usual chasers. Reports of my signal were not as good as usual which I put down to the antenna but I realised on my next activation, that the FT817 had been running at only 2.5w output on Herzogstand not the full 5w, so that would also have been a factor. After logging 10 contacts in 9 minutes on 20m, one being an S2S, I decided to give 10m a go again as I only intended to be on the summit 30 minutes due to having to be back home mid-afternoon. I was rewarded on this second try of 28MHz with 3 contacts with Austrian stations, one of them an S2S. After I had already announced I was going QRT, I got a telephone call from Martin DF3MC who had activated Herzogstand the previous day, I called him on 10m and we made a QSO, meaning he had a completed summit within 24 hours.

Some interest was shown by one of the walkers on the summit and after explaining what I was doing, he said that he used to be involved with CB and had done some portable operating with friends, years ago. He seemed interested possibly in Amateur radio and I gave him a DARC brochure with the necessary contact information, so that could be a new Ham at some time in the future.

He also mentioned to me that Herzogstand used to have a very large LF antenna running down the mountain that was used in the 1920’s for long distance Radio Telegraphy. At the time, the only other equally sized antenna was in Indonesia and these two were the largest in the world. Later the antenna was used for research before being taken down. Shame! It would have been nice to see how such an antenna with 5w of Amateur radio power would have performed HI.

After completion of the activation, packing up and the route back down was, thankfully uneventfull and I arrived home exactly on schedule.

Photos:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

Diamond RHM-8B loaded vertical.

Log:

Activator log

Conclusions:

A nice day out. Definitely the correct decision to take the small pack and small antenna, with so many people (and dogs) on the summit and no where to safely set up away from the summit, had I taken the fibreglass pole and dipole, I would not have been on the air. Next time I should check more carefully that the rig is set to full power. Very glad I got the 4 10m contacts, for sometime there I thought I wasn’t going to. Very lucky with the weather at this time of year.

73 ’til the next Summit!

DD5LP/P – December 25th. 2015 – DL/AM-176 Rentschen.

Posted on by

Preparation:

While the weather has been unusually mild (12 – 14 degrees & no snow) my wife asked if we might go somewhere, where she could walk the dog while I operated radio, for a couple of hours. I had originally planned to try to access Ammerleite via a different, longer route, as the straight forward (still labelled as a public road on all maps) was closed off by the farmers as being a private – no access road the last time we went there. On the day however, I decided the best option would be to go to a known summit where access is easy and we had, had the dog (Bonnie) there before. So Rentschen it was, even though I had activated the summit twice this year already, I might just get it as a new 10m summit for the challenge.

The usual, reliable kit that I had used on many activations before would be used. The “two bag configuration”.

The Location:

Rentschen is well signposted (see previous reports) and is about 40 minutes drive from my home QTH. The road runs over the top of the summit, so it’s a matter of parking up and then walking a respectable distance away from the car, to ensure no support is being obtained from it, as required in the SOTA rules, setting up and away we go.

On the last two activations, I set up using a pile of cut down tree trunks to support the antenna mast, this time the pile of wood had gone, so I had to find an alternative and saw a small post further into the field. Unfortunately this was fairly close to some overhead power lines but luckily they caused no QRM (they were also high enough not to be a physical danger). The post was not very stable but as there was no wind was adequate to hold the base of the fibreglass squid pole that the OCF dipole was run from. Interestingly at the foot of the post was the Trig Point stone for the summit, so there’s no question of my location! I am slowly finding more and more of these stones that are used to mark the exact summit when no summit cross or other monument has been erected.

The Activation:

Once I had put the antenna up, laid out my small plastic sheet with the rig and the logbook on it, I immediately started calling CQ SOTA on 10 metres on 28.360 after checking the frequency was clear. I then spotted myself and after some time Jorge EA2LU came back to me but when I passed back over to him there were 2 or 3 other Spaniards talking on the frequency. Either I had coincidentally picked someone’s net frequency or these were other Spanish chasers discussing the fact that they couldn’t hear me (in Spanish), either way I move 10KHz up, re-spotted and completed the contact with Jorge. That was the only 10m contact for the day, I looked and saw that Peter OE5AUL was on another summit and manged an S2S with him on 40m. I finished off the activation five more contacts on 20m and then my wife was back with the dog and it was time to eat our picnic. So a short, but enjoyable activation for all involved. Finding an alternative route to Ammerleite (which is also quite close to my home QTH) is still on the list to complete.

Photos:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

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

5 metre squid pole.

Ramsey QAMP 20/40m amplifier and batteries (taken but not used)

Log:

activators log

Conclusions:

A nice day out with the family. Not a great number of contacts but enough to activate the summit and add one to my summit multiplier number for the 10m/6m challenge. Unfortunately as I had worked Jorge from another summit on 10m before, he does not count in the challenge any more.

As on Gschwandkopf there seemed to be a pipe on 10 metres into Spain, but very little else on 10m to be heard.

73 ’til the next Summit!

OE/VK2JI/P – December 19th. 2015 – OE/TI-690 Gschwandkopf.

Posted on by

Preparation:

Still looking for points in the 10m/6m SOTA challenge, I wanted to get out and add some six metre activator points to my score. Living in Germany I am not allowed to operate portable on 6 metres so a trip into another country is needed to make this happen. After activating Hohe Salve a couple of weeks earlier, I didn’t want to have such a long drive this time and so looked at the summits around Seefeld in Tirol. I found the six point, plus 3 winter bonus activator points Gschwandkopf (OE/TI-690) with its 4 seat, seat lift direct to the summit. As with many lifts in the alpine regions this lift had been out of service for maintenance and on the web site it simply said back in operation sometime early in December. Looking at the webcam on Thursday it was obvious it was not yet back in service. I sent an email on Friday asking when it would be back in service to get a reply saying they had just started service again that day. So the plan was set down to Seefeld the following day and up Gschwandkopf. I then heard that two CMEs were heading earthwards and could mess up propagation but how often have these not arrived or not had any effect? So I decided still to go and hope for the best.

Rather than risk taking the repaired but untested six metre lightweight beam I decided to make do with the Spiderbeam Aerial-51 UL-404 off centre fed wire dipole that I would be using for 10, 20 & 40m in any case. While it wont give any gain on 50MHz it is defined as working on six meters.

So I would in fact be using the reliable kit that I had used on many activations before. The “two bag configuration”.

The Location:

Gschwandkopf located above Seefeld which is about 10 minutes drive from the German/Austrian border on the road from Garmisch Partenkirchen to Innsbruck. Somewhat further than my usual German summits but not nearly as far as Hohe Salve. In Seefeld itself the Gschwandkopf lift is signposted but not at every turn, so it was good that I had mapped out and written down the road names in my planning. I also have a printout of the roads through Seefeld but did not need that – the list of road names was sufficient to get me to the valley station of the lift in 1.75 hours from leaving home, exactly as Google Maps had predicted.

Ticket prices are interesting on this lift – the cost to go up and down the lift was €17 with a €2 deposit on the re-usable electronic ticket. But the lift is also listed as requiring 4 points on a points card, so in principal, I should have been able to buy an 8 point card at €3 less than the simple ticket but I was then told that the points cards are only sold to those skiing, not to pedestrians.

Once I got to the lift, there was a separate section for pedestrians who had to wait until the half / full hour before they could use the lift. This was because they had to slow the lift down to load and unload those not on skis.

The Activation:

Once on the summit, there were two restaurants (only one open as the number of people skiing was not big) and a small hillock (the actual summit) which as well as some benches also had a transmitter building and mast from the Austrian Broadcasting company. While I thought twice as to whether I should set up so close to this station, it caused me no interference and this is a lovely spot with some great views. I could see this being a good site for a 2m FM repeater or some 2m SOTA simplex contacts but I was here mainly for 6 meters not 2 meters, so I set all the usual gear up and started calling CQ on 50.140 and tried to self spot. I had especially taken out an Internet package on my Vodaphone SIM, but this refused to work in Austria, so I fell back to good old Deutsche Telekom (I have two SIMs in my phone) and sent the required SMS code to enable Internet connectivity and this time (not like on Hohe Salve) it worked. There was no free WiFi on this summit as there had been on Hohe Salve.

I spent probably about 15 minutes on 6 metres calling and calling and calling, with not one response. SWR was fine, just propagation was not there. I then tried 10 meters and was happy to be able to get a total of seven contacts on 10 meters. The first 6 from Spain – good solid, easily readable signals. There seemed to be some propagation “tunnel” between me and Spain. The seventh 10m contact was with Karl M3FEH in Cornwall England and that was a difficult contact with very low signal strengths in both directions, but somehow we managed it. Thanks Karl.

Once it seemed there were to be no more 10 meter contacts I saw some other activations were on 20m – of these about half I could not hear , two I called could not hear me but in the end I did manage three S2S contacts – two on 40m and one on 20 metres. 14 chaser contacts on 40 meters completed the log. After the last contact an S2S, I had to hurriedly pack up the station to be able to get to the lift to go down on the half hour – otherwise I would have to wait another half hour before I would be allowed on the lift.

Photos:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Equipment:

Yaesu FT817ND.

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

5 metre squid pole.

Ramsey QAMP 20/40m amplifier and batteries (taken but not used)

Log:

activator log

Conclusions:

This is a very easy access summit. I was surprised initially while planning as to why so few people have activated it, until I saw it had only been added to SOTA in October 2015. I expect a lot of people will now include it in their holidays to Tirol and in Summer, I expect the lift will take pedestrians without a delay.

The propagation on 6 metres was not there however there seemed to be a pipe on 10 metres into spain. Was the extra drive worth it – no I’m sure I would have been able to capture the 10m contacts from a German summit.

73 ’til the next Summit!