I intend to go back after two years absence to OE/TI-517 Hohe Salve next Monday (7th. December) and activate it, specifically looking to give contacts on 10 metres and 6 metres for the SOTA challenge. The weather, while cold, promises to be dry and sunny, so if I don’t get flooded with calls on 10m and 6m, I will also try 20 or 40m.
The set up will be QRP - just the 5w SSB from the FT-817 to an off centre fed dipole at about 5m AGL.
I had hoped to have a 2 element 6m beam with me but after a disasterous test today, I will need to re-build that - perhaps on my next excursion to Austria, it’ll be ready?
Note I can only operate 6m portable in Austria as it is not legal in Germany, so I hope the chasers appreciate the extra distance I have to travel to do this.
To make this a little different, I will be running my Australian call, prefixed with OE, not the German call. So please listen out for OE/VK2JI/P from OE/TI-517 next Monday somewhere around noon local time. I will self-spot.
Here’s hoping for a few six metre and ten metre contacts!
73 Ed, DD5LP / VK2JI / G8GLM.
Additional information:
If I can erect my dipole where I did last time, it will run roughly E-W meaning the direction of radiation is mostly going to be to the North and the South. As there are higher mountains to the south my best chance of contacts on 6m and 10m are likely to be from Austria, Germany, the Benelux countries or if propagation is very good, possibly into the UK.
Thanks to those who called me today. Unfortunately the propagation on 6 metres was horrible and I was unable to make even one contact on 6 metres (which was the main reason to go to an Austrian summit rather than a German one - where 6m portable is not allowed).
I did manage 2 contacts on 10 metres however and those were both S2S contacts!
I actually managed 5 S2S contacts and 18 contacts in all.
One interesting contact as I was switching back from 10m to 20m was on the QRP frequency on 15m 21.285, was Santa’s station OH9SCL (Santa Claus Land) who was calling CQ from above the Artic Circle. He had a great signal and not surprisingly as he was running 2 KW if I understood correctly - we exchanged 5-9 reports both ways - my 5watts and “Santa” Kimmo’s 2,000watts. Hmm, I wonder what that says … Anyway, it’s nearly Christmas and Santa’s elves do have to make sure everything works before the big evening.
I will be posting a report with pictures to my blog at dd5lp.com as usual, in a few days.
Once again, thanks for those stations who called and managed to hear my QRP signal.
that seemed to be really a lucky contact on 10m SSB.
Just when I finished setting up my SOTA equipment on the Herzogstand, I recognised your 10m spot on SOTAwatch and immediately tuned my 30m antenna to your spotted 10m frequency and heard absolutely nothing
My first conclusion was that 10m band is not yet open. Therefore I concentrated on my activation on the 30m band. When no chaser was calling anymore on the 30m band I wanted to change to the 20m band. Luckily I tried again on the 10m band and now heard you very loud and clear calling CQ.
Thanks for the contact. My very first contact in the 10m/6m challenge
