I was so busy, what with the start of the school year last week, I had completely forgotten about OE-SOTA day on the 16th of September. OE6WIG (Franz) called me around tea-time on Friday night to ask if I would be out on the hills. I immediately said yes and started looking for a suitable summit. The weather is slowly improving here in Austria, after the passage of a cold front on Thursday and Friday. Last year was something of a wash out. I was reduced to huddling in the entrance of a small hut on a 2 pointer called Eggenberg OE/ST-484:
The weather would be rather cool & cloudy, but dry at least. This year I would be able to get up on a higher peak with a good take-off to the north where the OO & NO chasers would be. The OE6 SOTA group had decided to have an aprés-SOTA dinner at the Latschenhütte in the Fischbacher Alpen:
I thought this was a great idea, as the Latschenhütte is located in the middle of a plethora of straightforward SOTA summits and easily reachable at the end of the day. Many OE6 oms would like to go to the main OE dinner, but it was a little too far north last year. Thankfully, I had not yet activated the Hochschlag OE/ST-217 this year, which was only 20 minutes away from the Latschenhütte.
Although I normally only activate CW, the chance of dozens of S2Ss using 2m FM was by no means lost on me, so I packed the TH-D74E, a flowerpot dipole, the newly built QMX, 1500mAh Lion battery and 4m mast.
The weather was quite cool and the cloud was still on the summit when I got to the Stroßeggwirt at 08:30 am:
I soon warmed up as I made my way along the wooded ridge that leads from the car park to the summit. When I arrived at the summit, it was completely deserted, cold and a bit breezy. I took off my sweat-soaked top, put on my fleece, overtrousers and Patagonia Micro-puff hoody. Feeling a lot warmer, I decided to start with FM and quickly put up the dipole on a short 4m mast.
I was immediately rewarded with a flurry of S2Ss from other activators in the area, many of whom had line of sight to my summit, so generally 59 reports:
When the first wave died down, I decided to switch over to the QMX. I repositioned the mast and tuned up the Fuchskreis for 7MHz:
I made a quick dirty balun in the feeder, as the Fuchskreis is not very good as a choke, especially when used with wire lengths that are not a multiple of a halfwave.
Although the match was good on 7MHz, the wire was only 3/8 wave, so the QMX sounded very quiet when I tuned around the band. I quickly abandoned 7MHz and retuned for 10MHz, where the antenna is a perfect halfwave. Success! There was much more noise in the receiver and I was quickly rattling away at a nice pile up, starting with a S2S with Fabio IK2LEY:
The QMX did its job well, but I can’t say I’m not looking forward to the next firmware update, where the sidetone will hopefully be made independent of the volume and maybe some AGC added. My poor little X-Mini speaker was almost blowing its coil at times. I was definitely feeling a bit chilly by now, so I decided to make one last call on 2m and then pack up. That would have me back at the Latschenhütte for 15:00; plenty of time for a celebratory beer. The second call on 2m also brought in mostly S2Ss:
It was nice to speak to Peter OE6PID and Barbara OE6BID on the Katerloch OE/ST-372, which has a superb view over the Südsteiermark, and a very handy seat for activators.
Despite the mass of activity on the bands, I was not too sorry to pack up and hurry back to the car. The cloud was gradually lifting and bringing a little respite to Gerhard OE6PGM, over on the Plankogel OE/ST-227.
It had been much windier and cooler where he was. Although I wasn’t warm, I was at least out of the cloud and enjoying the occasional ray of sun. When I got back into the forest, the sun came out, of course. I was soon stripping off back down to a T-shirt and enjoying the autumnal sunshine.
I have never been in the Latschenhütte, and I was pleasantly surprised when I walked in. It is a large hut with glass roof in some sections; really spacious and well lit. The others spotted me and called me over the minute I walked in the door.
Naturally, being a ham radio meet, the TRX equipment was soon on display on the windowsill for anyone who was interested. It was a particularly nice afternoon for me, as I got to collect my trophy for number 1 activator in the Steiermark (and Austria) 2022.
All in all, it was a massive improvement on last year. I’m sure everyone’s fingers are crossed for even better weather next year and an even bigger turnout. I know many activators went home with well over 100 contacts, far overshadowing my rather modest efforts.
Please feel free to add your own stories below, I know there will be some other great reports from OE for this very successful event.
73 de OE6FEG / M0FEU
Matt
