First experience with GMA

Gerd, DF9TS and me spontaneously decided to try GMA. We wanted some action on the air instead of arguing with SOTA MT what map is correct und what is not. We appointed to meet today on the Olympiaberg (reference number DL/AV-171) at 11:00 UTC. I took a quick look at a thermometer and saw minus 4°, and the sky over Munich was gray.

Olympiaberg is a nice hill (564m) in the middle of Munich. It takes a good half an hour through Olympiapark to reach the lookout point on its top. I was quite surprised, there were only a few people on the hill, I guess, because of the weather. Due to the cold wind we felt minus 4° like good minus 15°. I set up my portable station and started calling “CQ GMA DE DD1LD/P”. After the second run I had my first QSO partner. After a couple of QSOs my hands were so freezing that I had some problems with keying and asked Gerd to proceed with CQuing. Altogether we gathered 10 QSO on 40 meters in CW and, what a surprise, we worked only one German. We also tried in SSB, but there were no takers. Some curious people asked us what we were doing here. Actually we wanted to stay longer and try other bands, but we were so freezing.

Dear chasers I thank you very much for working us and for your patience! We were so happy to see our old SOTA friends in our logs. Please work us, even you are not collecting the GMA points - every chaser is welcome and each QSO counts! Unfortunately, the new region DL/AV has been not uploaded yet, but I guess it will be done in a couple of days then you can account them for GMA. Have a bit of patience, please!

We had a nice walk (35 minutes there and 35 minutes back) on the fresh air, we meet our friends, we explained the people our hobby, and after two hours I am at home again drinking a cup of hot tea and writing this report. That is nice, isn’t it?

73 de Dzianis DD1LD es Gerd DF9TS