To fellow swiss sotarians:
I spend every year the summer holiday with my XYL in the Alps and we climb some 4000 m summits regularly. I have never tried to activate any summit because of the the extra weight of the radio needed. I am thinking about taking a 5 W 2 FM tcvr along this year.
However, I am wondering if there is a real chance to make any QSO on a weekday’s late morning from the central summits. We will be in Wallis region this year and plan to go to Lagginhorn and possibly Alphubel. What are the chances? I do not want to bring the radio up there only to find there are no QSO partners around.
73, Ruda OK2QA
In reply to OK2QA:
Dear Ruda, welcome to the swiss alps. from my own experience i can tell you that it is difficult to find qso partners on 2m FM during the week without a beam antenna… sometimes I have been successful by “announcing” on a repeater
and then QSY ing to a simplex channel.
gl, best 73cu
kurt HB9AFI
In reply to OK2QA:
Dear Ruda,
welcome to the swiss alps!
Concerning 2m FM contacts from higher summits (specially in the center part of the alps), I made the same experience as Kurt did. It is hard to get a QSO on weekdays.
Cuagn es gl
73 de Jürg / HB9BAB
In reply to OK2QA:
In reply to OK2QA:
Dear Ruda,
Welcome to the swiss alps!
It will always work, if you can enter a spot in SOTA-Watch! HB9APF and HB9BQU are well doing SOTA-2Meter.
Cuagn es gl
73 de Jürg / HB9BIN
In reply to OK2QA:
Dear Ruda,
It depends, what type of equipment you intend to use. I for myself use a IC-703, an inverted dipol for 20 m or, even less an ATX-1080, vertical, both used in ssb, in fact my equipment wheigts 5, resp 7 kg incl.Mast/for the dipol.
Working HF you would have no problem at all to make as many QSO you like. 2 m FM is largely depending on the area, the Wallis Region is not much operated. If you have a 2m/70 cm Handy, you may call on 70 cm-Relay-Stations first to organize your QSO’s.
Place yourself in to the Alert in any case.
best 73 de Edwin hb9zap, at the time in southern France on holidays.
In reply to all:
Thank you Kurt, Jürg/BAB, Jürg/BIN und Edwin for your advice.
I would not worry about HF, but the HF equipment is out of question when climbing the summits over 4000 m. Besides the weight, it is also a matter of time available at the summit itself. I will probably want to stay on the safe side and keep the activation activities for the less demanding summits. At the age of 65, I have to take care.
CU and 73, Ruda OK2QA
In reply to OK2QA:
a coincidence, yesterday (Sunday) HB/MM0DHY/p was QRV on from HB/VS-139 . after announcing himself on SOTAwatch he made 5 or 6 QSOs on 145500 kc FM using a handheld and a small yagi antenna…
73 kurt HB9AFI
In reply to HB9AFI:
I had one or two years ago my SOTA equipment (ATS3B) with me when we climbed to F/AB-126 Mont Buet 3096 m on skis. Time did not permit the activation since I was not the first one on the summit. This year the easy 1300 - 2000 m summits were not available on ski since there was not too much snow. Also the snow conditions were not very stable due to the weather history. Valais had also tragic snow avalanches with some lost lives.
73, Jaakko OH7BF/F5VGL