Rheinland-Saarland-Hessen SOTA Tour Day 1

The DM/RP Rheinland Pfalz area looked to be a good place for me to go and activate some unique and easy to access summits. The adjacent SOTA areas of Saarland DM/SR,  Hessen  DM/HE and Luxembourg LX, where I had unfinished business, where also reachable within the hire car mileage allowance of 1400 Kms on a 7 day rent, at 200 Kms per day. 

Day 1

1. DM/RP-187 Wildenburger Kopf

Cheap flights by Mr O'Leary's Ryanair were available from Stansted, 200 miles by road from my home, the roads to there are good so the airport can be reached from North Yorkshire within 4 hours. 

The afternoon flight brought me into Frankfurt (Hahn) airport by 18:00 local time, so I was in my Europcar hire car and driving out of the airport within the hour, leaving me time for one activation before it was dark. The weather was horrible and wet as I made by way to the drive on summit of DM/RP-187 Wildenburger Kopf (6 points). 

Driving route Frankfurt (Hahn) > DM/RP-187 > Landhaus Grafendrhon

The hire car - a Ford Puma ST Hybrid with 7000 Kms on the clock

The small budget airport at Hahn is actually 40 miles from Frankfurt and in a good place to start a SOTA Tour. I reached DM/RP-187 in around 30 minutes and found an operating position that would allow me and my equipment to remain dry, once my antenna was erected:

The shelter for my activation - with fixing post close by for travel pole - superb! 

Operating from my Decathlon stool with the KX3 on my knees

I didn't have much time to spare before driving to Grafendhron and my Landhaus B&B for the first two nights, so I made 17 fast QSOs from 17:35-17:51z on 40m CW/SSB before packing up. The first station logged being GI4ONL Victor, near Bushmills, followed by Tonnie PA9CW.  Last man worked was the very active Markus IN3ADF. By the time I arrived at Landhaus Grafendhron it was dark and very wet and there were no signs of life in the building. A note in German on one of the doors titled "Liebe Gaste" appeared to be directed at me.  It was inviting me to ring a mobile number. After failing to get a signal on the phone I normally use in Europe, I was getting desperate, fearing a night sleeping in the car. However, my backup mobile phone had a signal and after speaking to the proprietor I was able to locate the hidden key to get me into the building and my room. I would not recommend staying at this place for several reasons....

Once I had unpacked in my tiny room I went back into the car to change the language of the digital dashboard in my Ford Puma to English. 

Day 2 will follow....

Half wave end fed antenna tests on Cringle Moor G/TW-002

The half wave end fed - I was a doubter, even a non-believer you may say, in the popular half wave end fed.

On 100s of HF SOTA activations since I started from the hills and mountains in 2005 I have always used the half wave resonant link dipole without baluns, configured as an inverted vee. I have used an inverted L on top band a few times on summits, but not in the last ten years.

Despite working 1000s of SOTA activations mainly in Europe, and UK but also worldwide (I have over 200,000 Chaser points) at very good signal strengths, I was still dubious UNTIL LAST WEDNESDAY when I tried the half wave end fed out on an activation myself on Cringle Moor G/TW-002. 

Leaving the Lord Stones Cafe and Farm Shop Car Park (No charge) at OS grid reference NZ 524030, I was on the summit within 27 minutes. Approaching the top I passed the Alec Falconer Monument and stone seat:

The reason I wanted to try out the half wave end fed was because I am undertaking a solo trip to the German DM/RP DM/HE and Luxembourg SOTA regions in May. Without a fellow operator with me (of late this is usually @GI4ONL) I was worried that if my KX3 lets me down or my link dipole breaks beyond an easy repair, I will have substitutes by way of my YouKIts HB-1B and a half wave end fed antenna.

So a few weeks ago I sourced a 49:1 balun rated at 50 watts made by G4ICD (www.rfcomms.co.uk 1). This was secondhand on eBay and cost £15. Its quite well made - the internal components are potted and the connector is a good quality N type. The radiating wire fits into a spring connection and I have a strainer fitted which can be pegged into the ground or be left floating a foot or two above ground in mid-air. I resonated a 67 feet length of wire in my garden for optimum SWR around 7050 KHz and shortened this slightly to get the resonance as good as I could on that frequency. The SWR on 20m,15m and 10m was well under 2:1 over a wide bandwidth on all three bands. On 30m as expected, the SWR was around 8:1. I fitted a link at an appropriate point for 30m operation. This is easy to reach from ground level when the HWEF is mounted on a 5m pole. I also found that with the 30m link open the SWR on 18 MHz was a very usable 1.5 - 2:1. I used no counterpoise, just a 6m length of RG-58CU coaxial cable to the radio. (I use thinner RG-178 on my resonant dipole). The antenna is resonant on six bands therefore without needing an ATU.

On Wednesday I headed up G/TW-002 - one of the nearest summits to where I live, and my favourite out of the three TW summits in the Cleveland Hills which I visit every year.

Here are a few photos of the antenna and parts of it on the summit. I configured this as an inverted L fed at ground level, no counterpoise, just reliance on the 6m length of coax braid in the feedline. I tied off the far end to a stunted tree on the moor at a height of around 1m above ground.

Half Wave end fed 20m long on 5m fishing pole

HWEF feed point - 49:1 balun at ground level

30m link on antenna wire - using a Spiderbeam insulator as a former for the link

My YouKits HB-1B Palm key - battery - earbuds - logbook & pencil

Despite my doubts about the half wave end fed, I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised. I wasn’t using my Elecraft KX3 running 10 watts with it’s superb receiver and filtering. Instead I used an inferior 10 year old Chinese made YouKits HB-1B running 4-5 watts depending on the band used. I operated on 40/30/20 metres for a period of 45 minutes and made 37 CW contacts, all were with EU stations and included 5 Summit to Summit contacts with stations who called me (Thank you @HB9BIN, @F/DL6GCA/P, @IK2LEY, @HB9CEV, @HB9BQU).

1119z-1134z 40m 18 Qs

1138z-1146z 30m 6 Qs

1148z-1204z 20m 13 Qs

I didn’t try the half wave EF on any other bands.

So am I a convert to the half wave end fed? I would say not yet, but it’s a great tool to have in the cupboard and I will definately be using it again!

Point of note - an aside to the thread - I did not work @OE6GND during this activation. Although he did claim a chaser QSO. Gerhard clearly couldn’t hear me. He called over the top of Art @HB9CEV/P twice when I was in S2S QSO. I called him out in my response to Art sending “SRI ART QRM FM OE6GND” unfortunately Gerhard took this to mean he had a QSO and wished me 73. Reports were not exchanged and the QSO was not logged. If Gerhard had called me later, correctly, I would have been happy to work him, but he didn’t.

Final activation in Fuerteventura EA8/FU-008 Montaña de la Muda - 689m

My plan was to activate two Fuerteventuran summits on 2nd December, but I ended up settling for one very wet activation instead.

I arrived at the parking place for EA8/FU-017 at 0730z in terrible weather. Weighing matters up my second planned summit seemed a better option in such conditions, so I drove for around 20 minutes to reach a parking place for EA8/FU-008, which Victor GI4ONL had told me about after his previous visit. The last 400m of the unpaved road up to a good turning point was rough, but good enough to get traction from the Citroen at low speed.

My GPX Track:

Parking Place:

Car park shown above after the rain and mist cleared when I returned after my activation.

 

Waymarker for the Camino route that passes over the summit:

Undriveable track up to the military comms site:

Bank of three low VHF log periodics on the military comms site below the summit:

A cable duct and a climbing rope to a microwave link further up the mountain. I used the climbing rope as an aid coming down as I had no walking poles on this trip:

Microwave link at stone hut just below the summit, note the climbing rope is well fixed into the rock:

The operating position at the eroded trig point, with the KX3 inside the rucksack to protect it from the rain whilst operating:

Apologies for the rubber stamp type no name CW operation today, which was down to the weather, it led to a good rate though. The 44 Flora & Fauna crowd found me again, but the operating today was much improved than my last session.

74 completed QSOs on 20m in dire weather with the radio in the neck of my rucksack - so I was very pleased with the number of contacts completed, which included S2S QSOs with Ben @GW4BML on G/WB-022 and operating couple Ioan @YO5IA and Mihaela @YO5MCM on YO/MC-246.

I was far to wet to contemplate going back to the start point for EA8/FU-017, so with the weather uncertain, I drove back to the holiday complex for a cuppa and Twix, followed later by a nice all inclusive lunch!

Thanks to all chasers for being brief today and filling up my log book in a most satisfying way! No more ops from me on this holiday in Fuerteventura. It is most unlikely that I will ever return there, as I do not like the barren volcanic terrain.

73 Phil EA8/G4OBK/P

More activations in Fuerteventura: Montana del Arena & Montana de Caima

I climbed two more summits in Fuerteventura on 30th November 2022. There were no people here as they weren’t Caldera summits. I only worked one member of the North Yorkshire SOTA Association on my second summit EA8/FU-036. This was Pete M0HQO who lives less than half a mile from my home QTH in Pickering! 20m CW was the band and mode. I had many contacts on both summits - 77 on EA8/FU-031 all on 20m, and 78 Qs from EA8/FU-036. The Flora Fauna 44 crowd found me on both summits I reckon. So many blank names in my Saisie SOTA name file to bother filling in names from QRZ! As many CW operators will know, the operating standards of some of the FF operators leave a lot to be desired. I operate full break in and there were lots of them transmitting at the same time as I was. I only black listed one - he isn’t a SOTA guy - ON5GM - it took me over 2 minutes to actually work the chaser station I was calling thanks to him. He sent me his 73s but he isn’t in my log…

The photos I took aren’t so good. I had an early start so I could get back to the holiday village for my dinner and activate two summits. Both summits took around 30 minutes each to climb. EA8/FU-031 was more unstable ground, like walking up a snow slope, or on crumbly coking coal. EA8/FU-036 was much more stable to walk on and I could actually get a couple of tent pegs driven in to the ground to support my dipole. 15m band was pretty good on the second summit EA8/FU-036 (VE2JCW worked on 15m CW), but clearing the 44 ers on EA8/FU-031 held me on 20m for a long time from my allotted period, so when it eventually dried up on 20m SSB I packed up. I got plenty of S2S Qs on the second summit, and Fabio IK2LEY/P was worked S2S on both. I am having a (Juerg HB9BIN style) “lady day” tomorrow and hope to activate another two in one session on Friday morning, which will be my only day left operating before we go home on Sunday. Thank you to Victor @GI4ONL for two good GPX tracks for todays walking, both summits I believe, where he was the first activator.

Five pics on and around Montana del Arena EA8/FU-031, best I could do, I did not use the toilet / bidet on the way back to the car!

The next photo's were taken on and around EA8/FU-036 Montana de Caima:

SOTA Activations on Fuerteventura - EA8/FU-042 Calderon Hondo

It would have been great to make 70 QSOs on Calderon Hondo this morning, my 70th birthday, but I only made 55 contacts before things dried up. The logs are in. The final QSO was a nice one though, Art HB9CEV/P on 12m CW, the final one of my four S2S contacts, pretty good for a Monday before the Winter Bonus points period starts… Lots of people came up the hill after me, I would not have climbed it if it weren’t for SOTA.

Volcanic craters seem to fascinate some folk, not me! Nasty dusty places. Nowhere to pitch my pole, ground too hard to drive in a tent peg, so I relied on a small cairn I built out of lava rock to support the mast, albeit at a poor angle. KX3 10 watts and a 20/15/10m link dipole made up specially for this holiday. As well as working Art on 12m I also worked Mike G0HIO, using the 15m dipole via the ATU. I plan to take a break tomorrow and go out on Wednesday and Thursday. This time we are on holiday it's not a SOTA Tour.

A few snaps, starting with the parking place. It took me 34 minutes to climb to the highest point, 1.9 km, 242m ascent. I don’t think that’s bad for a 70 years geezer who was diagnosed with heart failure and prostate cancer three years ago...

The abandoned pushchair was interesting. I saw a couple with a young child on my way around the Calderon on the way down. I guess they will use the pushchair again on the flatter sections on the lower part of the slope on the way back!

FL/NO-009 Roc'h Trududon and FL/NO-022 Roc'h Toullaëron a nice pair

After activating several "drive on summits" in the north of France between the Eurotunnel and Britanny we left the Cote D’Amor area of Brittany and ventured into Finistere for two summits that were worth blogging. FL/NO-009 is the only 2 point summit on this trip so far. We walked about 500m to a way-marker post and set up well away from the TV transmitter, 56 QSOs all told it was busy:

FL/NO-009:

FL/NO-022

XYL Judy offered to carry TWO folding camping chairs on the one Km walk to FL/NO-022, so long as I carried the picnic. It was a fair deal. I set up in the woodland by the trig point (pictured for @ON4UP - I know Peter likes finding, looking (and sometimes kissing) these small trig points - similar to the ones found in his country). I worked @VE2JCW (20m CW) and @VE1WT (20m SSB), many EU stations and a few Ukrainian stations which is always good, given the current situation. For the first time I operated from a camping chair (Luc @ON7DQ style but without the shelf and umbrella!). I rested the KX3 on my thighs and it worked out really comfortable compared to the usual position of sitting on the ground on a sitmat. I got 46 QSOs - so that gave me exactly 100 QSOs for the day. Best QSO was working Roger @F5LKW F5LKW/P on FL/NO-074. I hadn’t chased the summit before - I had planned to go there to activate FL/NO-074 for the complete on Saturday on our way back across the top of France. The GPX tracks we used to get to both activation points are live on the SMP and SOTLAS.

FL/NO-022:

SOTA Tour - Czech & Bavaria June 2022 Part 1

In late June I embarked on a twelve day intensive SOTA tour from Prague, activating en-route across the west side of Czech Republic to Munich, south to Friedrichshafen and then back to Prague via the Bayern area.  I was accompanied on this road trip with my friend Victor Mitchell, who holds the callsign GI4ONL. We attended the "Ham Radio" convention at the enormous exhibition centre there, on Lake Constance, (Bodensee). When operating in the Czech Republic as well as using our own callsigns OK8CDX and OK8VM, we were permitted to use the special callsign OL15SOTA, thanks to Mirek OK1CYC.

There were difficulties with transport on this 2022 summer tour caused by rail strikes and airlines cancelling our pre-booked flights, however we were not impacted either by delays at the airports or in excessive car hire fees charged by our usual provider in Prague, Ren+plus, low cost car rental.

We activated 36 summits on this tour in the Czech and the German Alpine and German Low Mountains Associations. Many of the summits were non-descript and in featureless woodland, however several were outstanding and are worth writing about. 

My flight to Prague was on Tuesday 21 June from Manchester, however there was a rail strike that day so I travelled to Manchester by train on Monday 20 June and stayed in a city hotel overnight, using the Metro Tram to convey me to the airport on Tuesday morning. There were no delays at the airport and I easily passed through security with the radio gear and batteries etc. Some hardware such as my wire antenna and pole were packed into the suitcase and carried in the hold. The padlock on my suitcase mysteriously dissapeared during the flight, however the contents of my suitcase, which included a Thinkpad laptop were still there when I opened it up after my journey....

Our Kia Ceed hire car - Prague airport

I had time to spare at Prague, arriving at 4.00pm and then awaiting the arrival of Victor from Dublin at 9.00pm. However I was able to fill my time by signing up and paying for the hire car, an almost new Kia Ceed estate, before I enjoyed a beer and some KFC from the fast food outlet within the airport. Victor arrived almost on time, and he drove for around 25 miles in the direction of Germany to our first night hotel at Krušovice. 

The first activation took place next morning, 22 June, on the six point OK/PL-090 Vici Hora, where I used the special callsign OL15SOTA. Mine was the 30th activation of this summit. By around lunchtime we entered Germany, activating DM/BM-323 Entenbuhl and then the drive on summit, DM/BM-321 Fahrenberg, on our way to our pre-booked Bavarian Gasthaus in a village not far from Munich.

Next day, Thursday, we drove to Friedrichshafen, activating three summits on the way in the Allgau Alpine area. Friday morning we drove to the Messe for the Ham Radio event and the first person I met before I went inside was my friend Luc ON7DQ from Belgium, thank you to Luc's YL for allowing me to use her photo:

Victor and I attended the show on Friday and Saturday, which was not so good as many of the larger traders, such as Yaesu and Kenwood, who did not attend. The high point of the show was meeting the many SOTA activators and chasers and my friends in Chiltern DX Club where I helped man the club stand. We were ready to leave by mid afternoon on Saturday though and restart our SOTA Tour by returning immediately to the hilly Allgau area. We had time to activate Altringenberg DL/AL-272 and Laubenberg DL/AL-273 before reaching our Gasthaus on Saturday evening at Isny im Allgau. We had a "good drink" shall we say, that night - enhanced by a free glass of Schnapps!

The next day we got on with the job and activated four summits in the Allgau before reaching the massive DM/BM Bayerne Mittelgebirge area where SOTA points are easily earned from the many wooded summits. Our final day in the Allgau was very hot, but early morning it was a delight to be activating the Auf dem Falken (Also known as Falkenstein) DL/AL-271, which turned out to be a wooded ridge and just 1 Km to the summit where Victor found himself on the edge of a fenced off large drop, while I continued on the ridge for 500m to find an area in the woodland clear enough to spread out my 40m link dipole without fouling the trees. Victor also used a dipole and could get sufficent length out on the precipice for 30m band operation. Parking was at 47.593 10.300, track is uploaded to SMP and SOTL.AS:  

Victor's view from DL/AL-271 was better than mine....

Victor DL/G4ONL/P ready to leave DL/AL-271

This was our Bavarian lunch at the Alm on DL/AL-171 Eisenberg later that Sunday.

The summit was activated by Peter DL/ON4UP/P two weeks later.... 

We never go directly from Gasthaus to Gasthaus on these SOTA Tours - so to encompass the four activations on this day my Google Timeline shows we drove just 62.9 miles and wallked 8.9 miles climbing the four summits, 12 points earned and 4 SOTA Completes for me:

Now go to Part 2 and the next thrilling installment!

SOTA Tour Czech & Bavaria June 2022 - Part 2

Monday 27th June was a long driving day - 200 miles driven by Victor from a start point hotel at Marktoberdorf. We walked 3 miles all told to garner 22 points on five rather non-descript, but easy to access summits in the Bayern (DM/BM) District towards the end of our journey:

DM/BM-378 Sulzbuck (4)

DM/BM-352 Sclupfelberg (4)

DM/BM-217 Buchberg (4)

DM/BM-351 Dillberg (4)

DM/BM-256 Poppberg (6)

We drove for around 150 miles, well beyond Munich, before we reached our first of five summits. DM/BM-378. Google map of our days journey to the village of Lintach, near Amberg:

When we arrived at our Gasthaus in Lintach the attached restaurant we thought was open was closed - the fraulein proprietor said this was "due to Corona". It hadn't re-opened since the start of the crisis, so we had no choice but to take a shower and then drive back to Amberg where we found something to eat in a restaurant on the edge of a park. It wasn't so good, unlike the previous meals we had enjoyed in Germany.

Tuesday 27 June was a far more interesting day, when we travelled to Gasthaus Fidelis in the village of Grafenweisen where we stayed for three nights. This was a perfect location. Grafenweisen is centred in the DM/BM area ten miles from the Czech border. There is an excellent restaurant at the Bahnhof owned by a lovely hard working Pakistani chap, and a plethora of  high scoring easy to access summits in the DM/BM area that kept us occupied for three days. Summits shown below are within 25 Km radius of the village: 

Overshadowing Grafenweisen is the summit of DM/BM-368 Schwarzriegel (10 points), the towers of which can be seen from many miles away. The place is called sektor F, and was an intriguing cold war eavesdropping intercept station used by the west. The site has been sold off and is open to the public. There is an elevated viewing platform (293 steps!). I'd like to go back and further investigate as our SOTA itinerary would not permit us the time to do this on our tour. The next day we visited the east side former Soviet bloc eavesdropping site in Czechoslovakia (as it used to be) on Cerchov OK/PL-088, but that is another story. The two cold war listening sites are only seperated by around 25 Km. 

Whilst planning the tour I found a walked track in the SOTA Mapping Project from my friend Markus HB9DIZ. The walk from the top of the Hohenbogen chairlift into the activation zone of sektor F I would grade as "easy", here are some photos:

€11 return ticket up to the start of the walk into sektor F and Schwarzenriegel DM/BM-368

Hohenbogen Chairlift €11 return fare

The towers in sektor F

The suntanned Victor DL/G4ONL/P at the top of the lift

My operating position on DM/BM-368 - about 400m from Victor's

This summit was in my top five of the 36 visited on the tour.

However earlier in the day whilst the dew was still on the grass, we activated DM/BM-349 Hungerleite, also called Rotbuhl (673m). Less than a 10 minute walk to the summit from the car park. No one else there that early in the morning.

DL/G4OBK/P station on Hungerleite DM/BM-349

I found another comfortable seat on this summit, while Victor operated on the 30m band amongst the trees around 200m from me. He only managed to make 5 contacts (albeit in eight minutes), compared to my 17, however Victor got the best DX QSO of the tour at 06:37z when he worked S2S long path with Andrew VK1DA/P who was activating in Australia on the summit of VK1/AC-043. Andrew had a good day DX wise, as at 06:28z he worked my friend Terry G0VWP in York on 7 MHz SSB! 

The day went like this, with five summits activated for another 34 points:

DM/BM-349 Hungerleite (6)

DM/BM-309 Hochwald (6)

DM/BM-368 Schwarzeigel (10)

DM/BM-304 Haidstein (6)

DM/BM-030 Rossberghutte (6)

Distance driven 68 miles distance walked  7 miles (+1.5 miles on chairlift)

Now go to Part 3