During my vacation I continue to activate summits in the county of Dalarna. My first activations was at two skiing resorts. The first in Idre were I activated Fjätervålen SM/DA-010 and the next day Städjan SM/DA-003. Walking up Fjätervålen took 40 minutes from the parking lot. Städjan is not a skiing slope but a very popular viewing point. This hike took 1h to walk the 3km upwards. We were the first to come up that morning and I got my antenna and radio set-up fine. Later on people started to come and ask what I was doing. Some thought I was counting the number of hikers. Any way, my two first activations were on 4-pointers and that is rare in this area of 2-point mountains.
Day three we continued to our next destination in Dalarna county to another skiing resort called Sälen. There I did two activations on two hills next to each other. The first mountain we walked up to was Hundfjället, SM/DA-011 and then after that and some lunch we continued to Västra Kalven, SM/DA-016. Quite easy mountains, just follow the cable car to the top and find the highest spot. Good weather and nice activity.
After coming back to our summer house I rested for some days and decided to visit the final summit around lake Siljan that I have not visited yet, Björkberget, SM/DA-050. This is a very simple mountain were you can drive your care to the actual top. There has been a viewing tower here but it was removed due to aging and the new tower has not been built yet due to the pandemic. Anyway I found a good place to set up my radio and antenna and good acitivty came to me. Also Mr. Sweden SOTA, Lars, SA4BLM, came and visited me on this 1-pointer. He lives just a few km from this place and we had a good chat and finlly I got a face behind the call. (He always calls me when I’m out, no matter if I’m in Sweden or abroad.) On our way home I stopped at Gesunda berget, SM/DA-027 for a quick activation. That is my closest summit to our summer QTH.
My last activation this vacation was when I went back to Sälen to activate a new summit, not activated before, Östra Granfjället, SM/DA-032. My 16 year old son joined me for a two day hike. On the first day we had sun and quite good weater but the next morning we had rain and thick fog and good wind. The activation was short but I managed to get some good QSO in the log including two S2S.
In total I made about 125 QSO, all on CW. Out of those I got 9 S2S QSO.
From now on I will start using a linked dipole rather than my EFHW. I have compared these two antennas on reversebeacon.net and found out that the difference is quite big in perfromance.
SM/DA-010, Fjätervålen
SM/DA-003, Städjan
SM/DA-003, Städjan
SM/DA-003, Städjan
SM/DA-011, Hundfjället
SM/DA-050, Björkberget
SM/DA-050, SA4BLM Lars
SM/DA-027, Gesundaberget
SM/DA-032, Östra Granberget
