today I had a day off work and decided to activate a summit. I chose the Schatzenstein, DM/SX-204. Murphy must gone along with me and therefore I have to apologise for my bad keying . The reason was the cable to the palm keyer. The connector was broken and I had to hold it with one hand into the socket. When I moved a bit I lost the dots or dashes, not real fun.
Anyway, I had a great time on a very quite and lonly summit with 63 QSOs and 3 S2S. The weather was excellent, calm and 15°C.
Thanks to all stations called in and for the patience with my QLF.
In reply to DL3JPN:
Hello Steffen
I had the same problem with cable to mini-paddle on last sota. It is not easy to key with this problem because I had to hold the cable. Anyway Iwas a pleasure to work you from f/po-184.
Best 73 and I hope we’ll meet again.
Andre - f5ukl
Hello Steffen,
after all you have a valid activation and a lot of happy chasers. Congratulation.
I was on Schatzenstein on Saturday 14/11/2009. 30 mins later than I had planned. Started on 30m there was heavy QRN from 10112 to 10121 kHz. I tried a call on 10122 MHz but its no prefered SOTA QRG so nobodey answered. On 40mtrs no free frequency, there was contest in OK and digital signals from 7032kHz upwards.
A little later I found OK1CYC/p on 20mtrs and tried to make S2S. Got an RST of 539 but when I came home I found no entry in his log :-(.
So better QLF than no QSO hi.
I hope Murphy doesn’t live on DM/SX-204. I will try again an activation there.
Well done, Steffen! I don’t notice any problem during our QSO.
I often “activated” HA/KM-002 for VHF contests in the 1980s. (Of course from batteries, but then I did not know it that it will be called “SOTA activation” some 25 years later…) Once my elkey went wrong… but problems are to be solved! I cut the keyer cable with my pocket knife, blanked and separated the shielding and the inner conductor in about 15cm length. I bundled the shielding on the pad of my thumb and the inner conductor on that of my forefinger. I keyed rapping on my thumb with my forefinger…
Maybe some people thought, I drunk too much “QSO-water”, but I was QRV and nobody suggested me to “QLF”
