A Short Summer Sota Trip

Some friends (non ham)  had asked me to join them for a midweek in the "Vulkan Eifel" region in Germany. The weather looked nice and I still had the time and ... the money, so why not ... hi.

So I looked if I could sneak in a couple of SOTA activations along the road ...
I wanted to pick up two Belgian summits I did not visit on my winter tour.
Also, I wanted to activate some summits in the DM/RP area.

The summits I could activate were :

ON/ON-025 (Burteaumont)

ON/ON-024 (Bois du Tour du Coo)  EDIT : This summit is no longer valid for SOTA!

DM/RP-001 (Hohe Acht)
DM/RP-002 (Ernst Berg)
DM/RP-003 (Schwarzer Mann)

Day 1

ON/ON-025 (Burteaumont)

We drove from Ostend to the first summit , description and parking info is in this post.

All activations had to be short ... so I quickly set up the link dipole on a 6m pole, and the KX3, not too far from the car.

Sitting just below the dipole, I made 22 qso's, all on 40m , and a mix of SSB and CW.

ON/ON-024 (Bois du Tour du Coo)

EDIT : This summit is no longer valid for SOTA!

This summit is near a nice amusement park "Plopsa Coo" , and the famous waterfall "La Cascade de Coo".

Parking for the summit is at the entrance of a small graveyard, here 50.393306, 5.874168.

Leaving the parking lot, you will se a "50 km/h" sign, and right across the road is the small entrance to the track to the summit. 

See a good description and track on G4OBK's blog.

The track is easy to follow , a little steep in places, but it is a nice walk.

The summit itself is flat, and has many places to setup.

I chose a nice spot in the wood along the gravel road.

I did this summit alone , while my friends visited the waterfall, so I had to make it short again.

I used the endfed antenna this time, to save a couple of minutes ...

I made only 10 qso's here, but 3 of them were S2S !

After a quick visit to the waterfall to have my picture taken, we went off to Daun, and there was no more SOTA until day 4.

The people at the hotel were very friendly , and the table that was reserved for us was number ... 73 ! 

Day 4

After some nice visits to the lakes around Daun, and the cities of Bitburg and Koblenz, it was again my turn !

Now was the time for a few DM/RP summits, and in a perfect order .. 001, 002 and 003  !

DM/RP-001 (Hohe Acht)

First we went to the very nice summit Hohe Acht. Parking is along the L10  at position 50.391469, 7.006560.

The shortest track to the summit is a bit steep, but not too difficult. It runs along the axis of the parking lot, and is also on the SMP site.
Another, longer track is a bit easier to walk and leaves the parking to the South.

At the sumit is a stone tower, the Kaiser Wilhelm Turm. Make sure to climb it, to have a nice view of the area. In the distance you can even see the racetrack of the Nürburgring.

For my activation, I did setup on the bench in front of the tower, but that was not the best place. 

Even on a weekday, there were many visitors and some stopped to ask some questions ... so maybe you can find a quieter spot behind the tower (near the trig point).

Still I had a good activation with 30 qso's in the log, but no S2S this time.

DM/RP-002 (Ernst Berg)

In the late afternoon, I went to this summit on my own, while my friends took some rest.

There was not much to see at this summit, except for some large windmills.

I parked my car here: 50.236247, 6.768847, although you probably can drive a bit further, I saw a car also parked here 50.232368, 6.772866.

I walked in a semi-circle around the summit, because the shortcut to the summit was all in mud.

well, the track I took was not much better ... seemingly, it had rained a lot the days before we came. My track is on the SMP site.

Finally, I found a nice spot in the activation zone, wide enough to set up the link dipole, and where the soil was more or less "dry" enough to sit on the ground (still on a plastic bag of course).

My log showed 18 qso's, 7 and 14 MHz, CW and SSB. I had one S2S with DL/PA7ZEE/P who was on  DM/HE-003, about 100 km East of me. Strange enough, this contact was made on 14 MHz !

Day 5

DM/RP-003 (Schwarzer Mann)

This was the last day of our trip, but still I had one summit on my list.
This is a very easy one, the main road L20 goes just over the summit, all you have to do is drive off at the parking lot, setup and operate. Well enough, because the rain was pouring as we arrived.
Parking position is here 50.256576, 6.359078.

Luckily, just after I had setup my antenna, the rain stopped, and I could operate "dry" for one hour ... good for 15 qso's, all on 7 MHz SSB.

And after this ... off we went for our hometown Ostend ... a bit of a wet end for an otherwise nice and sunny trip.

See you on the next one !

73,
Luc ON7DQ