Concluding my blog of my trip with GI4ONL to activate summits in Germany and Czech Republic...
After visiting the former NATO / American cold war radio monitoring site on DM/BM-368 two days previous we had a chance in the late afternoon of 30 June on our last day staying at Grafenweisen in Germany, to visit and activate Cerchov OK/PL-088, a summit over the border in the previously Russian controlled sector in the former Czechoslovakia. I hadn't researched the summit and did not know this was a former intelligence gathering site until we arrived on the summit, which was in fact a "drive on". The legal access road lat long is via the junction at Capartice 49.412N 12.788E. The road is paved with tarmac, then slabs and setts.
Please Note: It was reported by DH2ID in Sept 2023 that there is a "closed to all vehicles notice" now on the access road
 |
Victor at the bottom of the intelligence gathering workplace (closed 1989)
|
There were two large structures on the summit, and numerous sheds and buildings. The Bistro in a large shed was closed - we were told this by Palo OK1CRM who we met there by chance. There were other surprises awaiting us on the summit. Palo was the station manager of the OL7P contest station and is a CW man like me. He showed us around the station which was in the same large shed that housed the Bistro. The station is set up for VHF Contests and contains several home brew linear amplifiers. Here they are:
 |
| Palo OK1CRM and the 2m amplifier stack | | | | |
|
 |
My inverted Vee on 5m pole fixed to trig pole
|
The activation of OK/PL-088 produced 19 QSOs on 20m - 15 CW and 4 SSB. The UK stations worked were M0BKV, GM0GAV, GI0AZB and GI4OSF. As I was packing up a lovely girl who was exploring the summit came up to me and we got chatting. Her name was Pauline and she was on a walking holiday from Hamburg.
Pauline had walked 15 Km from the nearest town in Germany, Waldmunchen, that afternoon - we offered her a lift back there and she accepted, dropping her off on the outskirts of the town. We proceeded back to Grafenweisen for our final night in Germany, before travelling the next day (01 July) to Plzen via these four OK/PL summits:
OK/PL-019 Skarmanka (6)
OK/PL-028 Korab (6)
OK/PL-093 Ulikovska Hora (6)
OK/PL-094 Smrci (2)
These four summits were all rather similar non-descript wooded summits and as a result no photographs were taken. Plzen was a large city and booking the hotel in the midst of it was an error on my part. It wasn't very good. We would have been better finding a hotel in a village outside the city.
Our final day meant travelling to Prague and activating two summits on the way, OK/PL-035 Radec, which was a pleasant walk on track and path to a hilltop with a comms site there. The final summit OK/ST-021 Krusna Hora was a pleasant walk, which we did as a circular walk from the car park. The GPX file is on the SMP website:
 |
Observation tower on OK/ST-021 Krusna Hora
|
We had no time to climb the tower. My activation was confined to SSB only as my Palm Paddle key stopped sending dots on the previous summit. Turned out when I got home and checked that the dot contacts just needed cleaning and adjustment. First time I have needed to touch it in 4 years and 100s of activations. After finishing on OK/ST-021 we motored to the Globus car wash and KFC we use every time we have been to Prague and then headed for the airport to hand in the car.
The journey home was not the most straighforward. I took a Ryan Air flight to Stansted. No hassle getting through security at Prague. Due to a rail strike that day by Greater Anglia Trains I had to catch the train to London, make a bus journey across London from Liverpool St to Kings Cross station and then train to York from there via LNER.
Terry G0VWP picked me up at York and drove me the 30 miles back to the home QTH for which I was very grateful. I was home just before midnight, 02 July.
36 SOTA Complete summits activated over 11 days
691 QSOs
204 SOTA Points
No comments:
Post a Comment