Pulpit Rock (Preikestolen) in Norway is a famous tourist destination, with a sheer drop of 604 meters above Lysefjorden. It’s also quite close to my QTH, so I decided to make good use of the splendid WX this weekend. Pulpit Rock itself is not within the activation zone, but the summit is a short half hours climb from there, and absolutely worth a visit, providing a stunning view from 707 meters.
Pulpit rock as seen from the east side
My first QSO was from the Pulpit Rock late Friday. I managed to forget my headset at home, so I decided to limit myself to one QSO, so that I didn’t disturb the other visitors too much. This was late in the evening, and most of the other visitors had left for the day.
The equipment I used was my Kenwod TS480-SAT with a small 30Ah battery, and a 20 meter dipole antenna hanging vertically outside the cliff. All of it was securely fastened to metal anchors to avoid it all falling outside. A lot of people came over and wondered what I was doing, so I was able to do some good PR work for HAM radio.
Equipment
I camped overnight on the rock itself. It was a beautiful and warm summer night, so I left the tent in my car. In total we were 8 people that camped overnight at this location.
Campsite, sleepwalking strictly forbidden
Seeing the sunrise from Pulpit Rock has become a popular tourist event, and many came up to watch it this morning. I left the plateau early, and left for higher grounds to do my SOTA activation. This trip took about half an hour over very rough terrain, but was well worth it, and it provided some beautiful views over Pulpit Rock.
Looking down on Pulpit Rock at 5:53 in the morning, about half way up to the summit
The only downside about arriving early is that I had to wait for an hour for the chasers in Europe to wake up, but there are of course worse places to wait than on a beautiful summit. Band conditions were not great, and I did not have my normal 12 meter spider beam with me due to weight restrictions. This made activation a bit harder than usual, but in the end I got 8 QSO’s, 1 on 40 and 7 on 20 meters. No S2S this time, but I did manage to catch one SPFF reference. This was my first 2 pointer, and it was well worth the trip to get there.
Looking out over Lysefjorden from the summit, LA/RL-042 Preikestolen