Day 6 Monday 1st July 2024
Our three night hotel was very good, the Greek restaurant next door not so. The food choice was very limited, so we only used it one night. After drying out all our gear from the soaking we got the previous afternoon, on Monday we drove into the DM/BM area where the three six point summits within range were easier to reach on foot than some of the DM/BW area summits nearer to us.
After lunch on our way back to Bobingen, we were able to activate one summit in the DM/BW area before the weather turned against us towards the end of the afternoon. As we were driving we stocked up on supplies at one of the discount supermarkets where we buy sandwiches, fruit, bottled water and Haribo Super Rado sweets - these are a mixture of gums and Haribo's version of the licorice allsort. I haven't seen them on sale on the UK and I like them very much...
DM/BM-226 Durrenberg
After parking at the start of an overgrown access road leading to the wooded summit we realised this area and the summit itself had been an army camp at one time. We reached the edge of the woodland in 15 minutes, Victor went left and I went right. There was only one 10m QSO with my CW signals reaching Damien M0BKV in Cornwall. My other contacts were on 40m CW.
DM/BW-374 Wulzberg
We hadn't planned to visit this summit until I noticed on my mapping software (Locus Gold) that the summit was easy to access, so we diverted and went there. There is a large moated castle on the summit right by the car park. The castle is open to tourists and there is plenty of space in the grounds before the moat to set up a station.
Mario DJ2MX was worked on 10m ground wave and I also logged Rumen LZ2AF/2 before moving to the 20m band. I was well to the right of the front entrance down a banking with the 6m pole fastened against a tree, well out of the way of any inquizative onlookers.
DM/BM-135 Hesselberg
I drew a blank on 10m on this summit, CW and SSB was tried, Mario DJ2MX near Munich must have been out of range or out of the shack, so I went on to 20m and made plenty of contacts there instead, with Tom and Tabea operating with their HB9 calls providing welcome S2S QSOs...
Writing this blog five weeks after the activations I cannot remember much about this summit as I did not take a photo, so to remind myself of what was there, I looked at the blogs of Luc ON7DQ and Ed DD5LP. Yes, there was a large cross on the summit and a massive red and white comms mast. I cannot even recall if it was me or Victor who got the picnic table....
DM/BW-131 Ipf
Now this summit I did remember, not just from my photos either. The top was covered in wild flowers. The six point hill is prominent and overlooks the town of Bopfingen. Our brief incursion into the DM/BM area was now finished as we re-entered the DM/BW here. The car park is adjacent to a recreated medieval village below the hill. The walk up to the summit took us around 20 minutes.
This time 10m was more obliging and three widely spread contacts were made with ZS6FY, CT1HMN and SM5LNE with nothing else worked geographically in between. 6m is known as the magic band, 10m is the strange band methinks.... I went onto 40m CW to qualify the summit. Walking down from Ipf we admired the view:
It was early enough to visit another summit so we headed back towards our hotel to activate Grunenberg DM/BW-653 on the way, but when we got to the parking place the heavens had just opened, so we called it a day with four activations in the bag and headed to a McDonalds in Aalen for some fast food.
Day 7 Tuesday 2nd July 2024
Tuesday was to be a DM/BW affair with less driving to reach the summits. There was one six point and three eight point activations planned and none were "drive ons". The last summit proved eventful for Victor, who had to suddenly QRT before a crazed tractor driver cutting grass almost took him and his antenna out on the summit of Bernhardus DM/BW-848!
After a good breakfast, a 30 minute drive from Bobingen took us to this parking place for DM/BW-102 Hohenstaufen:
A short but very steep tarmac road took us on to a path to the summit. it wound its way through woodland with 138m ascent in a 750m distance. This was a walk of 22 minutes until I set myself down on a seat by a topograph on the western edge of the escarpment. Victor went left at the top and operated from the eastern side, once again the distance between us allowing simultaneous operation on the 10m band using alternate modes. There had been a Castle on the summit at one time. I read that it had been set on fire by peasants in 1525 and taken down.
I was within ground wave reach of a couple of well known German Chasers - Mike DJ5AV and Frid DL1FU who were the only stations to grace my log on the 10m band. 40m at around 0730-0745z was pretty good to finish off my log.
DM/BW-661 Staufen
Our activation of Staufen was a little awkward. No photos were taken as locating the stations apart on the path on the ridge of the wooded summit itself proved quite awkward. There was nowhere clear enough off the narrow path to erect antennas so Victor stayed on the western side of the summit and I walked on some distance and took the eastern side. The walk from the parking area took me 35 minutes over a distance of 1.6 km with 182m of ascent:
No contacts were possible on 10 meters so a session on 40m CW was again necessary. S2S QSOs were made with Kurt HB9AFI/P (HB/BE-012) and Chris DL1CR/P and Uwe DK8OA/P who were together on DM/NS-122. It was getting towards lunchtime as we travelled to the next summit and we happened across a bakery cafe in a village and were able enjoyed a lovely lunch as an alternative to our supermarket sandwiches which would keep for another day:
DM/BW-659 Kaltes Feld
A popular summit with 69 activations recorded here so far (Aug 2024). The distinctive name was familiar to me as I had chased it 19 times. The large summit plateau was above the Hornberg glider aerodrome and there was a track all the way to the top (Thanks Markus HB9DIZ - GPX track in SOTA Mapping). I left the 2km long track to seperate our stations and did not reach the Franz Keller Haus on the summit where there are tables and chairs. Instead I found a large clearing with BBQ facilities and a closed house at 48.7352N 9.8510E. A perfect spot for setting up:
Phillip ZS6FY was my only 10m contact, which was enough to give me the Challenge mulitplier. I caught Victor up on the track going down and when we reached to airfield area he was able to climb aboard and pilot this metal glider. Our final summit of the day, DM/BW-848 Bernardus was only 2km away, the flank of which can be seen in the top right hand corner of the photo:
DM/BW-848 Bernardus
Within 10 minutes from the parking for Kaltes Feld we were parked up at the col just off the L1160 and walking up the road towards the forest. It took us 25 minutes to reach the chapel on DM/BW-848 where Victor set up. At this time the forest was silent and devoid of any activity. I walked on to reach the track around 300m beyond the chapel where I set up, to enable both of us simultaneous operation on the same band:
Here is Victor, operating my station, almost sat on an ants nest that appeared from nowhere, which I failed to notice when I was sat there. So why was Victor operating my station? Well just as he set up his station in the grass near the chapel a forester in a powerful tractor arrived and started to cut the grass. The forester continued his work getting closer and closer and before Victor had made a single QSO he was forced to pack up the station smartly and move on! By the time he got to me I was finishing off my activation so he simply took my seat and made a number of contacts with my antenna and his KX2 and key to qualify the summit. PY1KJA and DJ5AV were worked on 10m CW from here.
As we did not like the menu in the Greek restaurant near to our hotel in Bobingen we looked around the area for somewhere else to get our dinner and came across an Italian restaurant in nearby Mogglingen before heading back to the hotel to enter our logs into the SOTA database and get an early night. The next day we would be headng back towards Luxembourg - a 200km drive to Schriesheim, with three DM/BW activations en-route.
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