A "HOT" Sota Activation

DM/NW-187 - Hoher Eimberg On the way to the summit ... view of Ettelsberg and Hochheideturm Like last year, I took a short midweek vacation with friends, in Willingen in the Sauerland Region in Germany. The weather promised to be nice, but as it turned out ... we ended up in the middle of a heat wave ! I tried to sneak in a few SOTA activations, but being on a tight time budget, I only made it on one. The day of my activation was also the HOTTEST day of that week ! In the morning of Thursday July 25th, we visited the local Willingen Brewery, and my only chance for activating was in the afternoon. Since I was not driving my own car, my friends dropped me off at the parking spot for the summit Hoher Eimberg, at position 51.303799, 8.603698. From there, it's only a 20 minutes walk to the ridge, so I easily survived the heat ... I had a good training in EA7 earlier this year, hi.

From the sign in the picture above, it is a short walk to the East to find a nice picknick table to set up your "field shack". Only problem ... everything is exposed to the sun, no shade to be found anywhere, or you should crawl under the bench ... The temperature was 37°C .. and rising ... So I tried to make some shade for the KX3 with my clipboard and a towel. The antenna was the usual 9.15m endfed, tied as a sloper to the 6m fishing pole. I stayed on the summit for a full hour, I had enough water, but also this contraption :  Two fans from old PC Power Supplies, strapped toghether, with a DPDT switch to put them in parallel or in series. Power came from the main KX3 battery, via a homemade PowerPole splitter.

The fans were pointed at the KX3 most of the time, to make sure I could continue on 15W.  But from time to time, also the operator needed some breeze ...  COOL MAN !

The heat was all over Europe, and so probably also influenced the chasers, I got only 20 QSO's in a full hour, but that included 3 S2S, so not bad after all. 73, Luc - ON7DQ