Preparation:

Despite the nice weather, for convenience, this activation of a new-to-me park would be a PLOTA rather than out on the ground. While my wife was at a thermal Spa, I would drive the roughly 30 minutes to this park and activate it from my car, parked in the car park within the park area. Reading online, it seems that this parking area filled quickly, but I was hoping that being on a weekday, it would not be a problem, and indeed that was the case. On a public holiday or at the weekend, that could be different, as this park has a lot of different sports and other attractions (including a beer garden) in it. The police are reported to be very unhappy if visitors park in the nearby streets when the car park is full.

I was surprised to see on the POTA Map site how small this (town) park was. I had always thought that unless they have some special historical meaning, small town parks were not allowed in the POTA system. Perhaps the rules in Germany have changed from the original global rules? We now have cycling trails and lakes in the DL scheme, so I think there is an effort to widen the scheme (possibly to avoid other schemes being set up for the entities not covered by POTA? LLOTA comes to mind).

The Activation

POTA DE-1254

Apart from a small delay firstly behind a large lorry and then a farm tractor on the country roads that lead from the Thermal Spa to the park, the run up was without incident. Indeed, the first closed road I came to was close to the park and diverted traffic was sent down the road I needed with the parking area on it.

On arrival at the parking area within the park, it was almost empty, with perhaps 5 cars in it; it could easily hold 60. So I parked where I could see I would have no problems with tree branches in the way when I put the loaded whip on the car roof and then checked my phone for other members of our little Comms testers (UK-EU/VK group) – It was 10;30 am local time, so I wasn’t expecting any contacts into Australia today, but Ernie VK3DET kindly took a listen for me in any case. He could hear nothing and indeed could see nothing at all on his radio’s waterfall. The 20-metre long-path propagation had certainly ended a couple of hours earlier.

I had up to 90 minutes of activation time planned, so before continuing, I took a swift walk around the park, as you will see from the pictures. This is a compact park, with lots included in its area. As I was already on 20 metres, I spotted myself and called CQ POTA, and a few contacts came in. They were just within Europe, except for one – K2UPD – Peter in Jamesville, New York State, USA. I have worked him before, and he must have a fantastic station as he comes through, and more importantly hears stations in Europe when others do not. His information on qrz.com is limited. I would have liked to learn what he has for antennas. I suppose he could have been operating a remote station in Europe, but he did not say so, and of course he would need a different call sign if that was the case.

Once the calls ended to my CQs on 20 metres I switched to 40 metres where I could see there were a few other POTA activators out and first tried those for P2P contacts before trying again to get callers to my CQ calls. I ended up with 13 logged contacts across 20 & 40 metres and decided to finish and pack everything up, so I could leisurly return to collect my wife. As it turned out, this was a good decision as several kilometres of road were limited to a speed of 30 km/h as the road markings were being re-painted.

All worked out well on the return journey and I had a new park in my list of activated parks.

Photos: