Today I re-activated LA/RL-102 Rossåsen after being inactive for well over a month due to health issues which confined me to lower-lying WWFF-areas. It’s important to note here that we are not on lockdown, and outdoors activities are encouraged as long as they happen at a safe distance from people.
It was lovely to get to the mountains again, even with strong winds. The nearby airport at sea level measured sustained winds at 30 knots (15m/s), with gusts at 30 knots (~20m/s), and it certainly wasn’t any less up at 282 meters of elevation.
On 20 meters I got ten QSO’s, all within Europe, but I heard at least two US stations together with a few EU stations trying to call me. Sadly I believe they heard my chasers and not me, so I was unable to log any DX today. I also tried 17 meters where I heard many DX stations, both US and Asia, but got no QSO’s whatsoever. After a short trip to see that 40 meters was as crowded as usual I decided to pack down.
My radio was as usual the Xiegu G90, but due to the high winds I decided to go with a vertical endfed antenna with external tuner, as the inverted vee I usually use wouldn’t have been able to cope with the high winds.
Hi Kjetil,
I hope you fully recovered.
I remember some windy days in those areas.
It was hard to work in these conditions, moreover with low temperature.
It’s about one month that Italy is in lockdown. It’s allowed to walk in a 200 meter radius from home, the DPI are obliged.
Thanks for shared your activation and nice sunset pic!
73
Roberto
Hi Kjetil,
Thanks for the nice qso on 20m.
Here in France the lock down is extended at least until 11.05.2020. It’s allowed to walk in a 1000 meter radius from home for 1 hour maximum, with a special authorization once a day.
So no SOTA activation possible except chasing from home.
Thanks for the nice pictures.
73’s
Laurent
Hi Kjetil,
Thanks for the QSO and the nice report.
I’m glad to read that you’ve recovered the good health as to get back to the mountains.
Regarding the guying of the fishing rod in windy conditions, my opinion is that it’s much better guying not too high. In my experience, guying the fishing rod at no more than 1,3m has always given me very good results. Guying too high applies vertical force to the flexible fishing rod, thus bending it very badly.
In case of setting up in a too windy summit, these are my preferred configurations.
If the wind is strong and steady enough, we can even leave the end of the endfed wire at the top flagging freely in the wind.
If we want to operate on the sheltered side of the mountain, we can setup like this, where we can leave the end of the endfed wire at the top flagging freely in the wind if the wind is strong and steady enough:
Or you can also extend a single guying rope from the end of the endfed wire to some point near the top of the summit and it will act as a guying rope for the tip of the fishing rod to avoid excessive bending of the top:
Note that the fishing rod is always guyed not far from its base. I would say 1.2-1.3m from the base is enough.
The expected fishing rod bending by the strength of the wind is not represented in the images to keep the drawing simple.
73,
Usually I use my SOTABeams bandhopper, who helps support the antenna up high, but I was afraid to use that due to the high wind (gusts over 20m/s). On this summit I also have to have the antenna free-standing, usually there’s some tree or other feature to support it on the bottom, so this was a strange situation for guying.
I’ve made some new guying rings that are significantly stronger, and that fits further down on the mast, so hopefully that will work in the future.
I hope you are both safe, and that you will be able to leave your homes more soon. We still have restrictions here, but they are minor compared to what you are experiencing. I hope to meet you on the air again soon, either as chasers or activators
