Hi All,
I will attempt to activate three summits on Tuesday that are relatively close to each other in the Allgäu region of Bavaria. On the map, all three look “straight forward” to access however as I have never been to them before, they could be more of a challenge.
I have posted alerts with aproximate times for the three summits DL/AL-282 Steig, DL/AL-149 Blender & DL/AL-281 Ursersberg. Anyone who has activated any of these, please let me know of any possible hinderances, thanks.
I will be running the FT-817 barefoot (5w) into my new Aerial-51 404-UL dipole antenna. I would appreciate chasers listening for me around the usual SSB frequencies and spotting me as I don’t know if I will have cell coverage on these summits.
I notice your alerts are for 40 and 20m. In addition to the new antenna, have you considered taking a second squid pole, a coax switch and a home-brew link dipole for 40 and 20m (with coax) to test the efficiency of the OCF antenna against a 1/2 wave dipole?
It would be interesting to see real-world results of a home-brew 1/2 wave link dipole against a commercial OCF dipole.
In reply to VK1NAM:
Hi Andrew, I currently do not have construction capabilities to build home brew antennas (still staying in the rental flat). My coax switches are in storage with the rest of my removals goods. I do have my old SOTABeams linked dipole and a smaller portable squiddy however given the time constraints, I wont be doing any comparisons on this outing as I am hoping that if all goes well, I might even add a forth activation to the day, so this will only be possible if I keep the activations as quick and simple as possible. In fact as I have never been to any of these summits before, (all of which are 2 hours drive away from where I am living) there could be delays getting to them meaning even completing three activations in a day could be a challenge.
I could use the Aerial-51 on one activation and the SotaBeams antenna on the next but this would not be a comparison as the sites will be different and the conditions will change over time as well.
Perhaps on the 27th. July (the VK1 activity day), I could set up both antennas for a comparison at Peissenberg. I could connect one to the front antenna socket of the 817 and the other to the rear and switch via the menu.
73 Ed.
In reply to G6TUH:
Thanks Mike. I’m going to try to get to the second and third summits earlier than posted so that I can try to fit in DM/BW-088 as a forth summit while it’s not that far away from the others. In fact it’s in the area where DM/BW and DL/AL overlap, meaning for a very similar summit, I get and give more points(8 points for the (DM) summit vs 1 or 2 points for the other (DL) summits in the area).
In reply to DD5LP:
Thanks to all the chasers today where I actually achieved FOUR summits, as well as the planned ones in Allgäu I also managed to include one across the border in DM/BW.
Thanks to those who managed to chase me on more than one summit and sorry to those who I know called but I couldn’t get to before conditions or QRM got worse.
I’ll be writing a blog report on todays activations over the next few days. You can find this at DD5LP.com. I probably wont be doing any more multiple activations for a while. Rushing contacts on a peak and then rushing between peaks isn’t my thing. I’m also a little worried about attempting more than one peak and then having and accident (however minor), being alone on these activations it could take some time to get back down and to a doctor (if needed).