Preparation:

DE-1059 was another new POTA park added from the WWFF scheme (I believe), and I wanted to get my name on it as the “First activator” (#36 for me). As my wife had an appointment in Weilheim, I was able to find a spot where the POTA trail DE-0595 (that I had already activated as part of a 3fer earlier) crossed this park, right on the River Ammer. The wife’s appointment in Weilheim was at 8 am, so this meant I should arrive at my spot (a 10-15 minute drive south) in time for some long path DX into VK if propagation was favourable.

Again, given the limited time available, this would again be a “PLOTA” operating from the car. So the same radio gear as used for the last activations was packed into the car, ready to operate, the day before. There was one change, however, in that the horrible, faulty crimped PL259 plug on the coax to the 3-magnet antenna mount had now been replaced by a “real” soldered-on PL259. I also packed a backup single magnet mount.

The Activation

POTA DE-1059 / DE-0595

After dropping off my wife in Weilheim, the drive to the location was uneventful. The ideal (concreted) parking area was closed as road workers were using it to park their large machines. I had already seen a warning about this on Google Maps and found another, hidden-away parking area at the start of a trail where the locals take their dogs for a walk at the other side of the river and directly (as you will see from the pictures) on the trail. When I arrived, it was empty so I parked long-ways so that the vertical antenna would be clear of the trees. When I left, the spot was full with three other cars that I hadn’t heard while I was operating with my headphones on.

The activation itself was interrupted by a phone call, which lasted over half an hour, so I was a little rushed to get the needed 10 contacts to qualify the park and trail.

Conditions were not as good as I had hoped, and after fighting for contacts on 20 metres (albeit including 2 into VK), I moved to 40 metres to get the needed extra contacts as the time approached when I was to pick up the wife and drive another 1,5 hours to visit a friend in hospital.

I tried many times for a park-to-park with a VK4 station, operating from a beach in a park in VK2, but the pile-up was terrible – had I got enough attention, we could have made the contact. In POTA “Park-to-Park” doesn’t have the priority that “Summit-to-Summit” has in SOTA, where another chaser that hears you trying to get through will normally tell the other summit station to listen for you. The POTA hunter community seem to be more self-self-self. A real shame.

Photos:

Equipment taken:

• Xiegu G-90 radio.
• Komunica Power HF-PRO2-PLUS-T loaded vertical antenna.
• 3-magnet car roof mount.
• 8 Ah LifePO4 battery.
• 2 x 4Ah Eremit LifePO4 batteries (one used).
• Lightweight headphones.
• Smartphone for spotting.

Log:

POTA DE-1059 / DE-0595

Conclusions:

it seems that I have found and fixed the antenna connector problem from the last activation. Given the relatively poor conditions, I think the work of those two VK operators speaks a lot for their efforts. I would have loved to make the DL-VK Park-to-Park contact, but thanks to the POTA Hunters, that was not possible.

73 ’til the next activation!