Saturday at the Ham Radio show and it was time to spend some money... after picking up our free baseball caps from the Yaesu stand, Nick and I splashed out on various items. We both got antenna analyzers, antenna hardware, connectors, T shirts with our callsigns on them and various bits and pieces. There were some bargains if you sought them out....
We saw Martin DF3MC with Emil DL8JJ giving another lecture about SOTA but in the main hall this time, and I met Volker DK2MT, who is a long distance walker who had completed a 800 Km walk to the show, carrying his Elecraft KX3 and equipment on his back and activating along the way - needless to say Volker's route was undulating to take in the summits en-route, and when I checked the database I noticed Volker had visited several of the summits which we had during our semi-motorised tour. What a fantastic project though, to do it on foot, I wish!
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| Long Distance Walker Volker DK2MT and Phil G4OBK (In new T shirt) at the show |
NIck, Ed and I had our lunch and left the exhibition a little sooner that the previous day, Ed joined us on the first summit for eight points and then made his way north home, whilst we went to another easy six point summit nearby...
DM/BW-349 Aacheck QRV 1207z - 1229z (20 QSOs)
The short GPX track for this summit was loaded into the SOTA Mapping Project, as all activations were on this trip where any distance was walked. We drove up a track from the hamlet of Betenbrunn until it petered out. We parked on the edge of a field and then walked less than 300m to the plateau.
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| Here is Ed DD1LD setting up his station - taken with telephoto zoom lens... |
Ed walked further than we did, finding a bench to set himself down on by the wood on the far side of the cropped field...
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| This is what an eight point summit in the DM/BW region can look like - thanks to the 100m prominence rule! |
My pile up of stations on CW dried up fairly quickly and knowing that Ed would take care of the Phone side of the activation from BW-349, we packed up and headed off to our second summit before the forecasted rain arrived. Before we left I took this picture of Nick G4OOE in action...note the George Fisher (Lake District Outdoor Shop) carrier bag...
DM/BW-350 Rinkenberg QRV 1340z - 1426z (47 QSOs)
We parked the car in a parkplatz in trees and walked a short distance of around 300m up to a timber yard, then beyond it on a track which ran across the wooded summit. The area around the yard was suitable for the activation so I retreated and set up there. When the rain arrived I had some shelter for the radio, so that worked in my favour. There was no one working in the woodyard being a Saturday.
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| DL/G4OBK/P Point of operation on Rinkenburg DM/BW-350 |
The first station logged was Dominik HB9CZF/P who was also visiting a summit on his way home from the show. With Ed having headed for home I did my duty and operated on Phone as well as Morse, hopefully keeping the chasers happy. The best DX QSO of the whole trip was made from here when I worked JE1BJT (Japan) on 18 MHz CW, I followed that with W3GH, N7UN (USA) and PY2KZ (Brazil). Once I had my quota and things quietened off I packed up and we headed back to our hotel in Tettnang.
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