The 6m SOTA challenge is still couple of days ahead of us, nevertheless I took an oportunity to activate summit Sedlo OK/PL-018 during a 6m activity on this Saturday. The event is organized by few hams in western part of Czech Republic and is meant for us to utilize old army radios, especially the RF-10.
The RF-10 is capable of producing 1W in FM in frequency range from 44MHz to 53 MHz, in 25kHz steps.
Sedlo is 902m ASL and there is 32m wooden lookout tower on the top. As an antenna I used the originally supplied vertical dipole “the bazooka style”. I used a fishing rod to hang the antenna over the lookout tower railing.
With the antenna at 32 AGL, I managed to make contacts up to 100km with only 1W, using only trophospheric enhacement, not even any sporadic E.
This was one of the best activations I ever did. I enjoyed nearly 2 hours of operating with cold war era equipment, which usually is just an eye candy in the shack.
73 Marek
Btw, the RF-10 can be obtained for less than 100€ if anyone is interested…