Today we went to S5/JA-054, mainly to visit the castle ruins. However, it being a SOTA summit, an activation had to be tried. It was raining heavily and there was a thunder storm coming in from nearby mountains, closing in fast.
So, without time to put up a mast or any shelter from the rain I decided to use the hole in the wall of this tower to hang my antenna wire:
So, my shack was set up pretty fast, wire though the wall
counter weight through another opening on the other side of the tower
Letting the KX3 ATU do its thing and hoping that at least some kind of signal will be radiated for anyone to hear me with this less than optimal setup…
(Still wearing my cycling cloths, because technically I’m on a cycling trip though Slovenia, not on a SOTA holiday… I couldn’t resist packing the SOTA equipment, though.)
After a lot of calling CQ and trying both 20m and 40m I just got four connections in the log right in time before the QRN from the nearby thunderstorm became to strong to be ignored. Luckily some OMs around Europe operate on better antenna setups than I had that day… 