Dear all
Ouch, this was early today for me! The alarm clock rang at 0245z. Public transports take their time, plus a nice hike of 30 minutes to Dottenberg, HB/LU-023. This summit should offer an acceptable take-off – better than my home hills nearby Lucerne. Wx was dry, the ground still a bit wet from yesterday’s first thunderstorm of the year. The only thing I had not expect was fog on the summit. Others had already some sun, but "grey in grey» here.
I could not use the real summit since there was already cattle there. But below I met huge log piles beside the trail. I could fix my 10-m-mast to a log carefully. This place offered a slight descent West-East with no hills or mountains nearby. I was even far enough north of huge Mt. Pilatus, HB/NW-011.
I had my standard setup with me: an end-fed for 20/40, a coupler 1:64 and the KX2 at 10 watts. I had planned to set it up as usual, as an inverted vee. So last part of preparing the setup was to check the kompass of the phone to see how an orientation of -10° would lay. This should be the line to place my inverted vee wire triangle along for having the better beaming sides show to +80°/+260°. Even this was possible with me sitting on the safer side of the log pile.
View to the antenna from the operator’s place.
Sitting that way for 90 minutes was a bit painful, but I had been rewarded with some DX!
So would this run? Yes! First was Andrew VK1AD/p on his summit, 5/5 on both sides. A DX S2S that much easy? Yes. Stunning! Calling a first round on 14,337.5 brought ZL4NVW/p into the logbook, with even stronger signals. It was worth waiting and calling on 20 m, with contacts to one further VK and two ZL at home, again Andrei, ZL1TM, my one and only ZL DX from summits so far. Thanks guys, this was fantastic for me!
Thanks also to all other operators from Europe letting me call “CQ SOTA”. I had been early enough on the band to meet 20 m quiet on my side with no QRM. Two further VK S2S could be chased on their frequency. 12 contacts after one hour, and I felt calm and happy. No hectic moments so far, so SOTA DX seems to be good also for my own wellbeing, hi. It has its own pace and music.
View from the side – I was sitting in the grass on the right side of the pile.
There were two other local stations here that early: Martin HB9GVW on HB/NE-001 in western Switzerland and Stephan HB9EAJ on HB/SO-009 nearby Basle. We exchanged some intelligence service info on the frequency on success so far. I left the DX service on 20 m after that hour and talked to some more local buddys on 60 m: Paul DL6FBK, Markus IN3ADF as well as Roman DL3TU who was on the bands today with the DL2ØSOTA service. A short round also on 40 m for the early morning chasers, thanks also for these contacts.
I left the place at 0700z – happy and with the intention to write this short report. So here it is, please enjoy. Doing DX with even S2S and this with 10 W on SSB only is a good experience. What a fantastic hobby!
This was my logbook:
UTC |
Callsign |
Band |
Mode |
Remarks |
05:21 |
VK1AD/P |
14MHz |
SSB |
S2S VK1/AC-048 |
05:33 |
ZL4NVW/P |
14MHz |
SSB |
S2S ZL3/OT-474 |
05:35 |
VK3AFW |
14MHz |
SSB |
|
05:35 |
ZL1TM |
14MHz |
SSB |
|
05:37 |
ZL1SKL |
14MHz |
SSB |
|
05:49 |
VK1DA/P |
14MHz |
SSB |
S2S VK4/SE-118 |
06:08 |
HB9GVW/P |
14MHz |
SSB |
S2S HB/NE-001 |
06:09 |
VK5PAS |
14MHz |
SSB |
|
06:10 |
FY5KE |
14MHz |
SSB |
|
06:12 |
HB9EAJ/P |
14MHz |
SSB |
S2S HB/SO-009 |
06:15 |
SV2CNE/P |
14MHz |
SSB |
S2S SV/MC-014 |
06:20 |
VK2IO/P |
14MHz |
SSB |
S2S VK2/HU-093 |
06:28 |
CT1DIZ |
14MHz |
SSB |
|
06:33 |
DL6FBK |
5MHz |
SSB |
|
06:35 |
IN3ADF |
5MHz |
SSB |
|
06:37 |
DL20SOTA/P |
5MHz |
SSB |
S2S DM/BW-099 |
06:41 |
DD0VE |
7MHz |
SSB |
|
06:41 |
OM1AX |
7MHz |
SSB |
|
06:42 |
EA2DT |
7MHz |
SSB |
|
06:42 |
9A1AA |
7MHz |
SSB |
|
06:43 |
S57NJM |
7MHz |
SSB |
|
06:43 |
F6AEW |
7MHz |
SSB |
|
06:44 |
EA7BO |
7MHz |
SSB |
|
06:44 |
OK2JIQ |
7MHz |
SSB |
|
06:48 |
ON5MA |
7MHz |
SSB |
|
06:50 |
DL6GCA |
5MHz |
SSB |
|
06:51 |
DL8DXL |
5MHz |
SSB |
|
Thanks to all for contributing and sorry to those I couldn’t hear!
Vy 73 de Markus, HB9DIZ
Special callsigns and buddies from today’s logbook (linked only the DX reflector users to the allowed maximum of 10): @VK1AD, @ZL4NVW, @VK3AFW, @ZL1TM, ZL1SKL, @VK1DA, HB9GVW, @VK5PAS, FY5KE, HB9EAJ, SV2CNE, @VK2IO, @DL6FBK, @IN3ADF, @DL3TU, DL6GCA, DL8DXL.