2014 EU Tour Day Nine - DM-BW Baden Wuerttemburg Region and Belgium

With such a long drive back towards Dunkirk for the ferry, we would have to be content with making just 18 points. However, considering the distance to be driven through Germany and Belgium by Nick that day then that would be quite acceptable.

Before leaving the Baden Wuerttemburg Region we just had one final "drive on" summit to visit and this was to be DM/BW-046 Plettenberg, the summit of which was near a large fenced in quarry area. 

The invaluable golf umbrellas were used again - without them we could not have activated the summit in the heavy rain. I set up next to some large felled tree trunks and completed 18 contacts on the 20m and 30m bands:

We were able to drive to within about 200m of our operating positions to secure another 10 points in the rain... 

The German word "Verboten" has the same ring to it as the English translation "Forbidden"

Activation complete we started the long drive north up to the Belgium border, this time avoiding Luxembourg...

ON/ON-017 Bois Haut

A woodsman had left me a nice platter on which to set up my transceiver on Bois Haut!

Leaving the main N52 road in Belgium a short distance we drove into a wood, parking up on the wooded plateau summit which had been partly felled. We had a dry afternoon now and this was a most pleasant activation so we stayed longer, completing 56 contacts between us on the 20m, 30m and 40m bands. Whilst the picture shows my radio calling CQ on the 17m CW band I made no contacts there due to poor conditions... we were soon away to another "drive on" summit before locating our hotel for the night...

ON/ON-016 Les Aisances

Les Aisances was another 4 point wooded summit with a lane running across the top of it, lying just off the main Rue de France N83 road in Belgium. There was no ascent involved for us on foot, simply a 100m walk from the car to set up our stations and make some contacts.  

Nick sets up his station in the wood (Bois) on the summit of ON/ON-016

The summit area of ON-016 Les Aisances where we parked the motor

Nick had a really good session on this summit and made 49 QSOs on the 40m band, whilst I struggled to find any contacts, hunting down just 13 QSOs over three bands over a 40 minute period despite self spotting. I put it down to the propagation...

So, our next stop was our Best Western Hotel (above) for the night which served us some excellent food - this was the Hotel de Lives near to the french border in Flanders where we exchanged experiences with a group of guys from the Scunthorpe Scooter Club who had been attending a rally in Stuttgart on their Lambretta's and Vespa's! They were (understandably) taking the ferry from Zeebrugge back to Hull the next night, whilst we were heading for Dunkirk via the French summit of F/NO-133 Mont Cassell.