Hoher Peissenberg DL/AM-001 at 05:40 UTC. The sky was a lot redder than this on my way but by the time I was at the summit and able to take pictures it had calmed down a little as the sun came up. Temps from 2-7°C (but at least positive and no rain).
Conditions were not as good as hoped, possibly due to the Coronal hole (QSB started to be a problem, later in the activations as well). Tuning around to start with around 0540 UTC, I had booming 59 signals from some DX home stations, ZL1KBA, VK4EEC and VK7ACE, certainly being strong enough to work easily had I been able to get through the pile-up of European KW stations with 6-element Yagi antennas!
I’m happy to report two EU S2S contacts with Austria & Switzerland and, indeed, thanks to the hard work at the other end, I am sure, three S2S into VK with Andrew VK1AD and Gerard VK2IO. Compton VK2HRX was in a park AND on a summit, Riley’s Mountain in the Blue Mountains National Park; it was very nice to get a contact with him S2S & P2P after so long (DL/AM-001 sits on three POTA trails).
The spotted UK SOTA stations were completely inaudible on the band from my summit (skip distance perhaps?).
Equipment: 20W SSB from a Xiegu G90 to a parasitic 1/4 wave vertical array built from Chinese 5.6 m telescopic whips, each with 8 x 3m long radials and spaced at 1/4 wavelength between the two whips, pointing between W & WSW.
Now it’s time to look for a summit to do the EU-NA S2S event from!
73 Ed DD5LP.
UPDATE:
Corrected Map with long path, thanks to Duca, YT3MD - see his QSO story announcement here:
How to turn SOTA log to a story? I’ve made HAM QStOry - Online Resources - SOTA Reflector
