Preparation:

As my wife had a doctor’s appointment to attend, I decided I would fit in a POTA activation while she was at the doctor’s office. This was originally planned to be a combined POTA activation with walking our dog, Bonnie, as so many times before however this was not to be as Bonnie died just hours after being diagnosed with an agressive tumour on the heart and splene, so in many ways this beacme a trip out to take my mind off what had taken away our apparently fully fit dog within two days. She died in her sleep, and my wife and I were with her.

The radio configuration would be the one planned for use in Cyprus: a small set of headphones, two 4Ah LifePO4 batteries, the Xiegu G90 and HF-PRO2-PLUS-T antenna on a single magnet base on the car roof.

The Activation

POTA DE-0462

The trip down to Weilheim, where my wife’s doctor was, was mid-morning, which meant I arrived at the parking spot within the park at about 11:30 a.m. local time. The parking area was a little muddy, but apart from that, it was fine for its purpose, and I was set up and searching for contacts within 5 minutes.

The car park filled later with a couple of cars, one with a walker and a courier taking his lunch break, but it was never really full.

I started by checking who else was activating POTA on 20m and went after searching for those possible park-to-Park contacts first. This was when I noticed that, despite being Friday, some kind of contest was underway with loud splattering stations filling a lot of the band. Luckily the very top of 20m above 14.300 MHz was fairly clear and indeed apart from one or two, the top end of the band was where the POTA activators were. There were a few to hunt.

The log below shows several P2P contacts, and I only really had two sessions where I found a clear frequency, spotted myself at pota.app and then called CQ. The band was difficult with very deep QSB as well as the occasional QRM. All in all, I made 15 contacts before packing up and heading back to pick up my wife from the doctor’s practice. We had had a CME hit on the previous day, so I was not expecting any great DX contacts but it’s always very nice to get some of the regular chasers in the log and a few P2P contacts as well. The equipment all worked without issues, so it seems a stable package for use on Cyprus in just over a week.

Photos:

Equipment taken:

• Xiegu G-90 radio.
• Komunica Power HF-PRO2-PLUS-T loaded vertical antenna.
• OPEK single-magnet car roof antenna mount.
• 2 x 4 Ah LifePO4 battery.
• Super small headphones.
• Smartphone for spotting.

Log:

POTA DE-0462

Conclusions:

It was a very strange and sad activation without our lovely Bonnie. All equipment worked fine, so at least I can be confident that the equipment will be ready for Cyprus.

73 ’til the next activation!