Preparation:

As part of a trip to Saxony Anhalt and Saxony, I planned a radio activation of Petersberg for one of the days and had some other possible “PLOTA” locations listed, if the time and weather allowed. This was to be a breakaway for my wife and me, and if the opportunity came up where she wanted to spend time in an art gallery or museum, and I could do a quick (car-based) POTA activation at the same time, that would be good.

For equipment, the G90 and HF-PRO would be the PLOTA configuration and for the summit activation, again the G90, but this time with the linked dipole and 6-meter mast (trying out my new auger solution to cut a hole in the ground to support the mast base.

Backup equipment would be the G106 QRP radio with a tripod-mounted RHB-8B 40-10m antenna and radials.

The Activations

14/4/2026 POTA DE-0725 Dölauer Heide & DE-0066 Unters Salle NP

After dropping my wife off at the museum in Halle, this location of a car park, mainly used by people walking their dogs, was about a 20-minute drive away over some horrible city street with potholes and cobbled stones.

After setting up the antenna on the car roof, getting the radio, battery, etc. from the car boot, I started on 20 metres, where I heard special event station EG1912T from Spain commemorating the sinking of the Titanic and praising the many heroes, without whom there would have been no survivors. As he was not getting any calls, I called, and we had a quick QSO. He gave me 59, but I doubt that was a true report. In any case, however, it proved I was getting out. After finding a clear frequency and spotting myself on POTA, I faced a similar situation to the special event station, calling CQ and getting no callers.

I then saw that Mike M9MMM/P was out, I messaged him, and as we could not make contact on 20m, we moved to 40m, where we managed it, but still with some difficulty. The bands were difficult, and while I was “time restricted” I wondered whether I would get the needed 10 contacts to qualify this park.

In the next ten minutes, I only managed 4 more contacts and decided to go back to 20 metres, which, thankfully, by this time had improved, and I got a flow of contacts. As I was considering packing up, I saw another park activator out on 40m, so I switched back, and my last contact in the log was a park-to-park with G6CKK/P in GB-6225.

15/4/2026 HEMA DL/HSA-003 Petersberg & SOTA DM/SA-033 Petersberg

This summit has 145m prominence and hence qualifies in the HEMA scheme (which is for summits with 100-150m prominence). For some reason, it is also in the SOTA scheme, which usually requires a minimum of 150m prominence – whatever – the one summit is in both schemes.

This was the planned radio day trip out, to be preceded by a visit to the “Berg Zoo” in Halle and to be followed by a trip to an art gallery (which was closed for restoration when we arrived, even though it was advertised everywhere as being open).

The visit to the Zoo was well worth it. It is amazing how this Zoo sits within the city of Halle, and it even has a hill in the middle of it providing great views across the city. Well worth a visit for anyone visiting Halle. Also worth getting is the 1-day or 2-day “Halle Card” which includes entrance to all the major museums and galleries, the Zoo, a guided on-foot tour of the centre and use of all buses and trams in the city.

The trip from the Zoo out to Petersberg was over the badly damaged city roads out into the country. On arriving in the village of Petersberg, there is a proper road up to the church and castle ruins; however, Google maps insisted that we take a mud track up to the summit, ot at least as far as we met the real road again.

There are only a couple of small parking spots that might accommodate around 8 cars. Despite the nice sunny day (Wednesday), there were only a couple of other visitors. While my wife sat and took in the views, I set up behind the castle ruins on the summit. My planned action of using the small auger to cut a hole in the ground for the 6 metre mast to sit it failed as the soil was too loose, so the fallback was to the Komunica Power HF-PRO2 antenna again, this time on my SLIK tripod with radials rather than on the car roof. Turning the G90 on, I could tell radio conditions were not good, but I also had the annoying “beep-beep” on receive. This is an internal noise that is audible even with the antenna disconnected. A couple of months ago, a new firmware came out for the Xiegu G90, which I had applied in the hope that the beep-beep would have been fixed, and I never returned the radio to the far earlier firmware version where this did not occur. (This appears to be a problem only on the very early models, as I have – the current G90 with the latest firmware does not have the issue). – After returning home, the firmware has been back-levelled, and the problem has been removed, as have been the data modes, but as I don’t use the radio for data modes, this is not a problem for me. I can now also adjust the receive filters at will, a feature that was removed when the data modes were added.

With the bands in a less-than-encouraging state, I operated on 40 metres and after fighting to get 6 contacts in the log in 25 minutes, I called it a day (HEMA/SOTA only need 4 contacts to qualify a summit). During this activation, my chosen frequency of 7180 kHz got stomped on by two old German boys discussing their illnesses. They even acknowledged that they had been told both by me and my chasers that the frequency was in use and then kept on talking on the frequency – they didn’t care that they were causing QRM. A sad example of bad radio operators. Luckily, the chasers who wanted a contact from me found me later on the next frequency that I spotted myself on.

After packing up and eating our pack-up lunch, we set off back down into Halle to find the Gallery closed!

16/4/2026 POTA DE-0712 Volkspark Kleinzschocker & DE-1183 Leipziger Auwald

This “PLOTA” activation took place during our day trip out to Leipzig (about a 50-minute drive from Halle). While my wife was at a light show presentation of a South American artist’s work, I fought my way through the Leipzig city streets, which are in an even worse condition than those in Halle, with the additional “fun” that roads were simply closed with no signposted diversion!

The location is indeed a park within the city and is well used. I has wondered if I would get a spot in the car park, but all was OK, and no one came up to ask what I was doing (which I don’t mind, but in this case, I had limited time). The bands had not improved a lot since the previous two days, but the G90 and HF-PRO2 managed 14 contacts in the time I had in a combination of 40 metres and 20 metres. The “star” of the activation was the last contact in the log with K2UPD, who was a true 5-9 into the park.

After going back to pick up my wife, we drove into the centre to take a river boat cruise from the “Stadthafen”, which is actually a building site. The planned marina is over 2 years behind schedule and has at least another year to go before it will be completed. Despite parking issues and then finding where the boat was going to be, the trip along the canals and rivers of Leipzig was probably the star event of our whole trip. These canals and rivers were cleared of all the junk dropped into them starting about 10 years ago, and now are clean enough to swim in, but they are mostly used by the Leipzig residents to canoe around the city. Those visiting Leipzig, I definitely recommend the (cheap) canal boat tours.

After this, we went further into the centre and viewed the two main churches and marketplaces before calling it a day.

Photos:

POTA DE-0725/DE-0066

HEMA DL/HSA-003 & SOTA DM/SA-033

POTA DE-0712/DE-1183

Equipment taken:

• Xiegu G-90 radio.
• Xiegu G106 radio (not used)
• Komunica Power HF-PRO2-PLUS-T loaded vertical antenna.
• SLIK tripod with radials
• 3-magnet car roof mount and single magnet mount (single not used).
• 6 metre mast, auger and linked-dipole (build fail).
• 8 Ah LifePO4 battery.
• 2 x 4Ah Eremit LifePO4 batteries (not used).
• Lightweight headphones.
• Smartphone for spotting.

Logs:

POTA DE-0725/DE-0066

HEMA DL/HSA-003 & SOTA DM/SA-033

POTA DE-0712/DE-1183

Conclusions:

The auger to cut a hole for the mast to sit in is not a viable solution; the (large) screw-in sun umbrella base will still be needed to support the 6m mast.

The Komunica Power HF-PRO2 performed well on a tripod or the car roof.

The G90 radio is far better with the firmware back-levelled.

73 ’til the next activation!