Ammergauer Alpen - 4 activations 14th. December 2014

Activation Reports
1

Now scheduled for Sunday 14th. December.

Brake system problems on car, so I’ll have to delay these activations until I get the problem fixed. I’ll put up new alerts when I have a new day for the activations.

All Weather dependant, but I hope to activate up to 4 DL/AM summits tomorrow, namely DL/AM-176 Rentschen, DL/AM-177 Kirnberg, DL/AM-178 Ammerleite and finally DL/AM-001 Peissenberg.

Some of these are accessed by narrow roads, so should we have overnight snow, some may be ruled out.

I have posted alerts on SOTAwatch but times are approximate only. I will try to keep to them but again road conditions could easily have an impact.

My main band of operation will be 40m with 10m & 15m added to the last activation, where I am trying for contacts into the US. SSB only I’m afraid - sorry to the iron pounders.

I would appreciate calls at all summits, however please understand that I may cut an activation short, after the first few contacts to be able to get to the next summit on time.

Hope to work some of you tomorrow.

Regards & 73 Ed DD5LP.

P.S. dropped and smashed the glass on my smartphone today, so hoping it will still be working tomorrow to allow me to self spot.

2

Thanks so much for the update, you saved me from trudging out in the snow to set up my Buddipole as a 2 element beam. I can do that for 10m & 12m, so I also thank you for considering SSB on one of those bands.

73,
Kevin
AC2KL

3

Hi Kevin, as the changed title now states, I’m going to give it another try now the car is fixed (I hope). Unfortunately there’s the ARRL contest on this weekend, so my little 5W to a dipole on 10m may not be enough with all the other stations on 10m. I was intending to come up in the frequency where the technician class operators can also operate however it appears that is by far the busiest part of the band in the contest. I will try around 28.625 and if there’s nothing free there, I’ll self spot when I find a free frequency. Here’s hoping I can catch you either from home or out portable if you have time.

73 Ed.
P.S. I only operate phone.

4

Hi Ed,

Just a follow up. I heard you on 10m, but there was another far stronger station layered over you calling CQ every 3 seconds. In the pause between calls I could hear you clearly, but I didn’t call because there’s no way I would have heard your response because of the QRM. I have a panapter, and the display was stunning. The whole band was completely packed.

Catch you next time,
Cheers,
Kevin

5

OK, no worries Kevin. Glad you heard me on 10m - I called there a while from my 4th. summit DL/AM-001 Peissenberg with no response, so I moved to 15m and 20m before it got too cold and dark. I only ran 5W on all of the summits, with either a linked or Off-Centre-Fed dipole at 6 meters AGL.

Although I managed all four summits DL/AM-176 Rentschen, DL/AM-177 Kirnberg, DL/AM-178 Ammerleite and DL/AM-001 Peissenberg, it was not without some “Challenges”…

I had hoped to keep the first three very easy and fast just operating on 40m with the vertical on a tripod. It was not to be. I found out at my first summit (Rentschen), that there was an Italian SSB contest on 40m - so there were NO free frequencies and any that seemed like a free frequency were splattered across by the over modulated 3KW+ station 2 KHz away! So I decided to switch to 20m on the vertical only to find the SWR on 20m was horrible (it had been 1.3:1 when I tested it on the antenna analyser two days previously). So I had to unpack the mast and linked dipole, which I had luckily with me as a backup. All of this added to the time on the first summit meaning I lost the time that I thought I had spare as I had set off 30 minutes earlier than planned.

At the next summit, Kernberg, I managed to bog my car while parking. Luckily the summit is next to a farm and the farmer (a real Bavarian gentleman) pulled me out with his tractor. So summit number two ran over my time scheduled.

By the time I got to my third summit, Ammerleite, time was still slipping away and on this summit apart from the fibreglass pole repeatedly coming down when I was trying to put the OCF dipole up everything went OK but once I finished and packed up, I was very short on time to get to number four, Peissenberg.

When I arrived I found that a large piece of the forest where I used to fasten one end of the dipole into, had been cut down. There were also more people at this (easy to get to) summit that I have seen here before. I found an alternate anchorage point for the dipole and then set-up fairly smoothly however the extra people around, several wanting to know what I was doing, also took some time out of the schedule. Some how I managed to get on air just 5 minutes late.

All in all a trying day of SOTA activations but enjoyable as well.

For those chasers I didn’t hear, I apologise but with the QRM and time restrictions I simply couldn’t get back to you. Thanks to those chasers who worked hard to work me on as many of the summits as possible, Manuel EA2BT (one of the few calls where I rember the name) and Mick M0MDA both managed to contact me on all but the first summit, where the QRM on 40m was horrible from the contest, Carolyn G6WRW had a remarkable signal from her mobile and contacted me on two of the summits as did Don G0RQL, Robert SP8RHP, Bill G4WSB and Leonel CU3EJ. It’s really nice to have contacts with the same chasers from multiple summits. It’s also nice to hear the regular chasers each time I go out. It really makes one feel part of the SOTA “family”.

73 Ed DD5LP.

(I will now move this thread from Activation Reports / Pre-planning to Activation Reports propper).

1 Like
6

Hallo Ed…
Sooo…thank you for yesterday and new summits.I have to complete my log from april 2014 until today:(((.
Best regards de Rob(ert) SP8RHP.
Vy 73!.

7

4 activations near the shortest day of the year is good going. If it takes 10mins to setup and 10mins to take down and pack up the station, then that is 20mins per activation. 4x acttivations = 1hr20 setup/packup out 8hrs20 total daylight.

That only leaves 7hrs for walking up/down and actually activating. Sure you can drive to the 1st in darknes and return home in darkness but there’s not too much slack time for delays and problems etc.

8

This was only a long afternoon - set off at 10:30am got home at 6pm. The summits are between 1 and 1 1/2 hours away from my home. These were all easy access summits, with no climbing, just walking. It was interesting driving from one to the next along some pretty small and windy roads, and that would have been a limiting factor had it snowed or if there was ice on the road! I suspect that with the weather now expected over the next week - 10 days, this was probably the last chance to do 4 summits in a day for a while. As it was I finished in darkness.
73 Ed.