My first steps in SOTA

I started my SOTA adventure in July 2014, with two summits in the Sauerland (Hesse) area in Germany.
I booked a hotel in Willingen, from there I did two daytrips to activate the summits.

This was my first summit:

DM/HE-390, Hegeberg - 654m, 6 points

I found a nice parking spot at position 51.31939,8.62723, near a small hut.

I started walking with my backpack, which contained a Yaesu FT-857D, a 9Ah battery (two Dell laptop batteries, put in parallel via diodes), and a lightweight "Fuchs" antenna for 20m and 10m.
I also carried a cool bag with my lunch.

I had not much experience in hillwalking or mapping, so I took the yellow line on the map above, making a large detour. In 2015, when I activated this summit for a second time, I found out there is a much shorter way to the summit, hi.

Along the way, I had to step over some fallen trees, but finally I reached the summit without any problems.

Then I realised I made a beginners mistake ... I had forgotten to take my fishing pole !
Not a real problem, I just draped the 10m wire over the trees, and looked for a shaded place under the trees to sit.

I didn't know anything about self-spotting, and the only phone I had was an old Nokia without data.

I was not doing any CW either in those days, so I just started calling CQ in phone, and with a lot of effort, I managed to make 10 QSO's in TWO HOURS time, all on 20m SSB.
So my first 6 points were in !

My second summit:

DM/HE-020, Dommel - 738m, 6 points

Three days after the first summit, I actived this one.
Parking postion is here 51.33173,8.67746.

This time, I took the shortest way to the top ... but it's a steep one!

At the summit is a nice lookout tower, maybe it would make a good place to operate on VHF.

But after climbing it and enjoying the view, I looked for a spot under the trees to setup my station.

I found this bench, and this time I hadn't forgotten my fishing pole!
So I could setup my wire as a kind of inverted-L.
The FT-857 was operated from within the backpack, where it was mounted in a wooden frame.

Power used was between 10 and 20W, limited by the capacitor in the little Fuchs tuner.

It took me two and a half hours to make 12 QSO's, by calling CQ or by searching for stations that I could work. BUT, I made some special QSO's ...

It was a pleaure to log Mike, 9H5DX, who had visited my radio club in Ostend.
I made my first Summit-to-Summit QSOever, with Hans, LA/PA3FYG/P.
And I worked an aeronautical mobile station : Jeroen, PH9HB/AM was flying to Eindhoven airport, but at the time of our QSO, he was flying 80 km South of Frankfurt. So for a QSO on 20m, this must have been "groundwave" propagation ... or is that "airwave" if you're talking to an airplane ? HI

So all in all, my first steps in SOTA were a pleasant experience and I got bitten by the SOTA virus, and it hasn't left me since.

73,

Luc ON7DQ