Today was a beautiful, Norwegian winter day, which was of course well spent on a SOTA summit.
I teamed up with LA3NGA and we drove off to Vestre Vealøs, LA/TM-013, which with it’s 500 meters provides a nice excursion.
Before we set up we had to get some descent footwear, as the roads were covered with thick ice. We got a nice pair of ice spikes for our shoes and set off. These provided excellent grip grip both up and down hill.
Ice spikes are handy
We drove the car to the best parking location, which is at 209 meters a.s.l. From there we followed a ice covered road to the summit.
LA3NGA walking on icy roads
The trip up to the summit took around 1.5 hours, with a few breaks, Parts of the road is very steep, with up to 30 degrees inclination, while other parts are very even. Luckily this trip has very little “lost altitude”.
Downhill elevation chart, cellphone lists altitude a bit too high
On the summit itself there is a very big radio tower which covers most of the region, as well as lots of more modern communication gear, and a 2 meter repeater. We decided to stay clear off this, and set up camp on a small plateau near the summit. This tower doubles as a very big christmas tree during winter time.
Vealøs communications tower, 168 meters high
Both of us use Inverted Vee antennas, mine from SOTABeams. I activated on 80, 40 and 2 meters, while LA3NGA covered 30 and 20 meters.
My mast with the SOTA flag and LA3NGA looking out on the view in the background
Conditions were not good, but I managed to book 20 QSO’s in total. A map is available here. LA3NGA collected around 30 QSO’s.
20 QSO’s in total. 80m is blue while 40m is magenta
WX was beautiful during the entire duration, the temperature was just below freezing, with a slight breeze of about 5m/s.
A view from the summit
