Preparation:

The plan was to get out and do another early morning activation before the wet autumn weather arrives. Originally planned for what was to be a sunny Thursday 22nd September, I moved my plans as Andrew VK1AD posted that he would be out on Saturday and hence my first EU-VK S2S contact in 3 years would be “possible”. The risk was with the weather as the rain was expected at the weekend. Thursday was sunny all day and I started wondering whether I had made a mistake but as other activators latched on to the Saturday morning time both in Europe and Australia, I thought these would be added opportunities for S2S contacts. As I had decided on my closest summit Peissenberg that I had already activated this year getting out and possibly getting an S2S contact was the “value” of the activation as I would not get the 1 activator’s point for this drive-up summit again.

As usual for early starts, all equipment was packed and ready to go on Friday evening for the early departure on Friday. This consisted of the usual backpack to carry all radio gear, the 6-metre mast, a flask with hot chocolate and a sandwich. I also loaded my large surveyor’s tripod with the 10-metre mast and the screw-in base for the 6-metre mast in case I needed it. The car would be parked within walking distance from the activation spot so I could take equipment to cover all possibilities.

The Activation

DL/AM-001 Peissenberg

There are two spots where I have activated previously. The lower (but still within the 25m vertical drop activation zone) is the large car park before the road rises up past the cemetery to the restaurant and church and there is also a nice spot exactly on the summit alongside the church. The last couple of times I have activated it from the lower car park and when trying out different antennas this is ideal as the car is close enough to exchange equipment from. This used to be a free car park however since COVID when lots of motorhome owners have camped there overnight, it has been made into a pay-to-park area. The upper car park has always been free but is a lot smaller however early morning is never a problem. Parking here has the advantage of a toilet but the activation point is out of view from the car (being the other side of the church) and hence everything has to be taken to the site in one action and space is limited, so the large tripod and 10-metre mast cannot be used.

Given that I have worked into VK from both spots I decided to avoid the parking charge (€2 for 3 hours) and head to the actual summit with just the 6-metre mast set-up. If there were problems with this site, I could always head back to the lower location.

I know the drive down so well that I was at Peissenberg in no time. It was just starting to get light as I approached the summit. At the end of the lower car park, there were piles of stones and signs to say no entry via the lower of two entrances – so I guess they are renewing that access. The higher entrance to the car park was still open. I continued up the road to the summit car park, in any case, to be surprised to see large signs everywhere saying this is a private car park and you could be fined if you park here. After stopping and reading the signs in more detail, they said you can be fined if you park here without a ticket and indeed a money-grabbing ticket machine was at the other side of the parking area. So, while the chance of being checked was zero, the place was deserted when I arrived and when I left, l did the right thing and bought a ticket. I realised later that the restaurant’s car park was full of cars as there is no charge there but as the restaurant would still be closed at the time that I left, I would not be able to give them any business and so parking there (if there had been a free spot) would not have been right.

Once I got to the two banks by the side of the church, I was happy to find everything the same as it has been for the last few years and I was able to “Bongo-Tie” the 6-metre mast to the railing and run out the two ends of the inverted-V linked dipole out to another bench on the western end and to a tree branch on the eastern end. While this is ninety degrees to the ideal direction for long-path to Australia at just 5-6 metres off the ground the dipole is not very directional in any case. There is no practical way to run the dipole north-south from this location in any case.

Once I had the gear set up on the bench, I sent Ernie VK3DET a message to see if he could listen for me. 20m has been opening at different times over the previous few days and this was going to turn out to be one where it opened later! So to start with no contacts into VK3 and in fact, Mike 2E0YYY was also setting up a special event station for the railways on-the-air weekend from the UK but as it was to turn out through a combination of MUF and long skip, I was not going to be able to make a contact with GB1FLR whose beam would be pointing away from me in any case, to also try for contacts into VK and into the US along that path.

While I could not get through to Ernie, I knew my chances of getting Andrew VK1AD were even less hopeful at the time however as he had just spotted, I took a listen on his frequency and heard nothing – perhaps later?  So while we were all waiting for the band to open, I spotted myself on SOTAWatch and was rewarded with a call from Dinos SV3IEG in Greece, so I knew I was getting out with my 20 watts and a dipole. this contact was followed by an S2S contact with Herbert OE9HRV/P on an Austrian/Bavarian border summit, Hochhaedrich. I presume this was a ground wave contact as if I had checked, I could probably see Herbert’s summit from where I was. Herbert was doing the same as me, waiting for conditions to get better to get a contact with Andrew or possibly one of the other two VK activators who had posted they would be out one from VK4 who I heard and called several times later but got no response and one in VK3 who I never heard, but I think he was mostly on CW.

30 minutes after my contact with Herbert, I got the first of three contacts with Ernie VK3DET (each time getting stronger in both directions). At 0620 UTC, I managed an S2S (portable at a summit to portable at a summit) contact with Andrew VK1AD/P in NSW Australia SUCCESS! At this point, the skies were getting darker again rather than lighter. After another couple of contacts with Ernie who was now an armchair copy, at 0645 UTC I decided to pack everything up and exactly at that point, the first raindrop fell. Ideal timing! 20 minutes later I was packed up back in the car and starting the drive home in the rain showers.

Photos:

DL/AM-001 Peissenberg

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Equipment taken:

• Mountaintop travelling 40-litre rucksack.
• Xiegu G90.
• Komunica Power HF-Pro2-PLUS-T loaded vertical antenna. (not used)
• Modified mini photo tripod with clip-on radials (not used)
• Lamdahalbe 6m mini-mast.
• Surveyor’s tripod (not used)
• 10-metre DX-Wire mast (not used)
• Screw-in sun umbrella support. (not used)
• SotaBeams linked dipole (modified).
• SotaBeams random length end-fed antenna (not used)
• 4 Ah Eremit LifePO4 battery.
• 4000maH LiHV battery (not used).
• Painter’s thick plastic sheet.
• Gardener’s nealing pad (not used).
• Lightweight headphones.
• Smartphone for back channel comms with the group over “Signal” and for SOTA spots.

Logs:

DL/AM-001 Peissenberg

Conclusions:

• Band conditions are certainly improving as we start to see solar cycle 25 kicking in.
• As we are right at the autumn equinox, the greyline path on 40 metres is not practical for contacts into VK/ZL however as we move into winter, it will become an option again. For now, long path on 20m is the option with possibly 17&15 metres opening up as well soon.
• The G90 / Linked dipole continues to perform well however if I have time, I should change the end black wire sections for a more visible colour, especially when on summits where I may get the public visiting.

73 ’til the next summit(s).

Preparation:

As conditions have improved greatly as Solar Cycle 25 “ramps up” several SOTA activators on the SOTA Reflector decided to go out to try for EU to VK contacts (ideally S2S). This was an independent effort, not the “semi-official” VK-EU S2S event, just one or two activators in VK and ZL heading for summits late in their afternoon to try for contacts with activators in Europe and the UK who would be out early in their morning. Contacts were mainly planned to be on 20m as it was expected to be open the whole week (18-22nd of April).

I had time on Wednesday of this week to try from my side and decided to keep things simple by heading to the Peissenberg summit. It has the advantage of not needing a cable car to access the summit. Some Cable cars are stopped for maintenance and while we still have astronomic numbers of new Covid-19 infections at the moment, being couped up inside a cabin with people I do not know, was a risk I decided to avoid.

I looked at the site and decided that I would attempt to put up the linked dipole in a North-South direction so that its side lobes went East-West. Due west is the direction I needed for long path propagation to Australia.

As this is a drive-up summit, I decided to take my surveyors’ tripod and my 10 metre mast. Apart from that the rest of the equipment would remain “standard” with the Xiegu G90 and the SOTABeams linked dipole and a couple of battery packs. All was packed into the car on Tuesday evening for an early 6:30 am (0430 UTC) start on Wednesday morning. 

The Activation

The trip down was uneventful, a route that I know without the need for maps or GPS as I have been there so many times. What I wasn’t sure I would find, however, was how full the car park would be. This is a favourite spot for camper van owners to drive to and stay overnight, to watch sunset and sunrise over the valley. I was glad to see when I arrived, that the car park was empty. I bought my 3 hour, €2 parking ticket and headed to the opposite end of the car park. I would normally aim for somewhere in the middle where there used to be two benches (now only one) so that I could set up the antenna long-ways along the grass field next to the car park and have my station on a bench. That puts the dipole in an east to west direction however and any directivity on 20m would then be north or south – 90° away from what I need for the long path to Australia. For that reason, I had intended to set up at the far end of the car park with the antenna running north to south. When I got there, however, the farmer had fenced off the area of grass that I had planned to use and so I went down into the normal field instead with my large tripod and 10m mast. 

It took about 15 minutes to lay out my groundsheet, unpack everything that was needed from the rucksack and set up the linked dipole on the 10m “travel mast”. As I was adjusting the inverted-V antenna to get the mast more vertical, it did what it has done on several other occasions and collapsed into itself bringing the feed point crashing down and breaking off one of its mounts.

This was of course a setback and I wondered whether to try again with the long mast but as I was already feeling the cold by this point, the chance of going through raising the mast again only to have it collapse again was too much of a risk, so I took the 10m mast out of the tripod support, laid it to the side and put in my backup 6-metre mast instead. While this would not have the antenna so high, it would stay up! Luckily I was about 20 minutes ahead of my plan and so the lost time with the mast collapse did not create timing problems.

 Tuning around 20 metres the band seemed quite quiet as the MUF was still below 14MHz but it didn’t take long until I could check the DX Cluster and then tune and hear the ZL and VK stations. Being portable, away from metro noise, is a real treat. My home location is rural and I can’t think of how bad it must be trying to operate from within a large city but being out portable (even on a cold morning like this one) remains a pleasure with the clarity and strength of incoming signals even with the simplest of antennas.

 After trying to call some of the Oceania stations and being hammered by QRO stations with big beams, I decided to find a free frequency (while there still were some), spotted myself on the SOTAWatch cluster site and started calling CQ. What a surprise – the first caller was Andy ZL1TM from Auckland, New Zealand. I guess my signal was getting out OK on the lower mast then! I also posted my frequency to our “Comms testers” Signal group and Ernie VK3DET was the next in the log. After chatting with Ernie for a few minutes, my next call was an S2S contact with Andrew VK1AD/P on VK1/AC-039 “Yellow Rabbit Hill”. Andy ZL1TM had told me that Andrew VK1AD was on the air and I had told him that unfortunately, I had a large carrier signal from somewhere in Europe exactly on Andrew VK1AD’s frequency and so hadn’t called him. After our QSO Andy went off called Andrew and asked him to come down to my frequency and so we managed the S2S. Thank you, Andy. Thank you, Andrew.  

That wasn’t the end of the DX though, two more contacts (which were a little more difficult as the band was deteriorating) followed with Ian, VK5CZ and Gerard, VK2IO, both of whom I haven’t spoken to in years.

It was interesting that I was not getting any calls from SOTA chasers in European countries. My thought is that as the skip was long, the DX contacts were working well but other stations in Europe were simply not in range of my antenna. After Gerard, Jack OH3GZ from Finland did call me with a true 5-9 signal but after Jack, the band seemed to be really dead. 

Peissenberg is only a one-point summit however I know that SOTA chasers just love to get as many activators in their logs as possible, so I decided to switch from 20 metres to 40 metres and the world was a different place! I worked 37 chasers in 20 minutes. 

During all of this time the temperatures had not been rising, rather the cold breeze was getting stronger and the mist over the valley had only lifted a little (as you will see in the photos below), so it was time to pack up and head home. At least the trip back to the car was only a couple of minutes rather than the 20-30 minutes that is more usual on the summits around here.

 Photos:

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Equipment used:

• Mountaintop travelling 40-litre rucksack.
• Xiegu G90.
• Surveyors Tripod and 10 metre DX-Wire fibreglass “travel-mast”.
• Lambdahalbe 6m mini-mast.
• SotaBeams linked dipole.
• 4000 maH LiHV battery (not used)
• Battery box (2 x 5000maH hard-case 4S LIPOs).
• Painters thick plastic sheet.
• Lightweight headphones.

Log:

Conclusions:

• The DX-Wire mast continues to disappoint even though it has behaved for a few activations. The fact that it is designed to be short and relatively light when packed means that it has many short sections with thin walls and that does not make a good strong mast.
• Even when the temperature is forecast to be a “warm” 4-5°C never underestimate how a small arctic breeze can take that temperature down very quickly.
• Overall the activation was a big success with an S2S into Australia and contacts into Australia and New Zealand as if they were local. It won’t be long before we get back to 2014 standards and we can bag half a dozen S2S contacts between Europe and Oceania in an activation with just a few watts of SSB and a dipole!

73 ’til the next summit.

Preparation:

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

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

The Activation

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

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

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

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

 Photos:

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Equipment used:

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

Log:

Conclusions:

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

73 ’til the next summit.

Preparation:

Despite the fact that I have already activated Peissenberg this year and hence won’t give me any additional activator points, it has two advantages. Firstly it is a drive-up summit, so for testing, I can take a lot more equipment with me and secondly, (normally) it is a quick summit to get to, so that early morning activations (Greyline or Long Path contacts into ZL/VK).

I say “normally”, but more of that later.

One thing I had been working on before the COVID pandemic was a directional wire HF antenna, called the VP2E (Vertically polarised 2 Element) – all the details are on this website, here. As the pandemic lockdown situation combined with winter weather, I never got my comparison tests completed. Hence along with trying for a contact with Mike 2E0YYY/P in England, Ernie VK3DET and Ian VK3YFD in Victoria, Australia, this activation was meant to act as a test of my 20m version of the VP2E.

The car was loaded the night before to allow an early departure, the plan to be on the summit operational by 0600 UTC. The weather was questionable having had two evenings with thunderstorms and high winds – one of those storms, bringing down one of my antenna support masts at home (repaired in 15 minutes, no real damage). The forecast was for a mixed day but with several other appointments in the week, it had to be this Wednesday morning or not at all.

The gear would be the new XIEGU G90 and battery box in my rucksack and several antennas including the HF-PRO2 antenna (and photo tripod), the SOTABeams linked dipole and of course the VP2E for 20m. To support the VP2E and linked dipole configurations I packed the surveyor’s tripod and 6 and 10 metre squid poles.  

The Activation

Peissenberg has two good activation points. One on the very summit alongside the church and one in the car park below the graveyard. The first has a nice seat and fence where I can attach the mast and run the wire antenna out to a flagpole in one direction and down around a try to a second bench seat in the other direction. The best for antenna tests with lots of room is the car park.

But first I had to get there! Everything was going to plan as I left home at 7 am local time (0500 UTC) and the trip down over the country roads, I could probably do almost with my eyes closed, I have driven it so often. It was on the last turn-off onto the road up to the TV transmitter tower and church, that I caught a sign that is normally not there, something about “full hours” – Where it was located on the junction it was difficult to see. It became clear what it had said when I got halfway up the road and there was another one (see below) – there were major roadworks in process and the road was closed until the next hour. It was 07:35 local – bang goes my chance of being on the air at 8 am (0600 UTC) – I had to wait the 25 minutes until the road section was opened and the various road working machines moved out of the way to let the traffic through. I guessed at this point that probably the road in the downward direction would be open only on the half-hour as there is no way two-way traffic would work with all the holes that had been dug along the side of the road (more of THAT, later).

I sent Mike and the guys in VK a message to say I had been delayed. Mike let me know that 20m was open to the US and just starting to open to VK.

When I arrived at the car park it was almost completely full of campervans. Obviously, this is a favourite location for the brilliant view. I did find a spot to park, not too far away from one of the two benches there and unloaded and set up the gear.  Half an hour after arriving I was listening for Mike. He was weaker than usual but an OK signal in any case. At this point, I wasn’t going to do any antenna comparison tests, with the lost time I wanted to concentrate on seeing if I could indeed hear the guys in Australia – and I could! The problem was they couldn’t hear me!

The receiver in the G90 is impressive – combine that with a low background noise level and you can hear the weakest signals. The fact that I run 20 watts when I am portable, not 450 watts will be a factor but not the main one. The fact was that despite an SFI in the mid to high 90s 20m was not good and by the time I got on the air. It was already suffering deep QSB on signals and soon went short. I could easily make contacts around Europe and even locally into Munich. Mario DJ2MX compared my signal on his beam and his vertical antenna and I was stronger on the vertical. As the VP2E is supposed to be vertically polarised, that was good news even though Mario would be off the side of the antenna – not in the direction of its gain – that was definitely pointing towards England and Long path to VK over the US.

After spotting on the SOTA cluster I had about 8 more contacts in the log, most of them giving me a good signal report. When those calls dried up and because another station had started called 2 kHz above my frequency, I went back to see how Mike was doing on his frequency. He also had no calls, so I called in again and we both agreed the DX capabilities of the band were gone and we both had storm clouds coming in but before we both packed up, Mike agreed to give me a comparison report between the VP2E and my normal linked dipole. It would have been best if I had had both antennas set up but I didn’t so there was a 10-minute break between the tests and while the VP2E appeared to give a 1 point advantage over the linked dipole, with the QSB on the band, this was probably not a good test. (1 S-point stronger is what it should be theoretically). I think my best bet is to use WSPR on both antennas as a true comparison at the same time or at least switching between them.

One Mike and I finished the test, I saw that half of the campervans had or were leaving – I looked at my watch to see it was quarter past the hours, so I thought, the road must be open at half-past for downward traffic, so I used to pack everything up into the car and get down while the road is open, otherwise I would have to wait another hour and with the storms coming in, that might not have been much fun.

  When I got to the closed section of the road, there was one Dutch campervan waiting at the traffic lights and a sign saying the road opens on the hour. I don’t know where the other campervans went – either they got through late on the previous hour or they knew some other route down the mountain on the farm tracks.  In any case, I had a good half an hour to wait, so I took the time re-packing the radio gear that had been just dropped into the back of the car.

One pile of wire (the linked dipole) had to wait until I got home to be un-tangled – that was a long job as you can see:

 Once the lights changed to green we DID meet some traffic coming up the hill but managed to manoeuvre past each other. There seems to have been a miscommunication between the two workers who were controlling the traffic lights manually. They had intended to get the cars down the hill first and then let the ones free to go up the hill.

  By the time I got home the next rain front was coming through, so staying longer would not have been pleasant. Overall the activation did not deliver what I had hoped for but it was a trip out and next time, I may try some of the farm roads to get up to the summit.

 Photos:

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Equipment used:

• Mountaintop travelling 40-litre rucksack.
• Xiegu G90.
• Surveyors Tripod and 10 metre DX-Wire fibreglass “mini-mast”.
• Six-metre fibreglass mast.
• SotaBeams linked dipole.
• VP2E wire “beam”.
• Battery box (2 x 5000maH hard-case 4S LIPOs).
• Painters thick plastic sheet.
• Lightweight headphones.

Log:

Conclusions:

• Sometimes unannounced road works can mess up your plans. There is a good possibility that I had been on the summit 30 minutes earlier I may have made a contact into VK3 with at least one of the two guys.
• Comparing antennas alone on a summit does not give accurate results, especially if they are not both set up together and you can switch between them. Perhaps next time I will test using my WSPRLite unit.
• The G90 continues to amaze me with its receiver performance.

73 ’til the next summit.