Sunniest Winter Bonus Points Ever

Predictions for Wednesday Feb 24th were excellent, sunshine all day and temperatures up to 18 °C, so I had to grab this opportunity.

Leaving my home QTH at the unholy hour of 05:25, I arrived almost three hours later on the first summit, ON/ON-001. I took my breakfast on a parking spot along the road.

ON/ON-001, Signal de Botrange - 695m, 8 points

Setting up on the parking lot (position 50.501208, 6.093355) was not easy, no way you can get any pin in the ground there, it’s all rocks.So I used part of a fallen tree to support my fishing pole, and installed my “long endfed”, 23m of wire with a 9:1 UNUN.

Last time I was on this summit (in Dec 2020), that UNUN showed a bad contact, making me call CQ on a piece of coax only 3.5m long … still Lars, @SA4BLM picked up my signal at 339, amazing.

I had checked the UNUN at home and couldn’t find anything wrong with it. But again, it behaved badly, it seems the BNC connector got loose and started turning a little, but by fiddling a little I could get it working, and had no more problem on the other summits.

To please the ON stations, I started on 80m CW. But who was the first caller? SA4BLM, him again, hi. I think Lars sleeps at his transceiver (or maybe his transceiver is next to his bed ?).

After logging 9 stations in CW and 10 in SSB, I moved to 40m, resulting in a small pile up, 32 more QSO’s in the log, including 2 S2S. A nice result, 51 QSO’s in 50 minutes, I can live with that.

Since it is now forbidden to leave Belgium, I had a walking track from the Belgian side to the summit ON/ON-009 (Iverst) from Peter, ON4UP. He had done this walk on the Monday before, but I decided that I would lose too much time and skipped this one.

ON/ON-011, Sur Clair Fa - 601m, 8 points

From my parking spot at position 50.319998, 5.972385, I walked 5 minutes to the East, to my operating spot at 50.320594, 5.976140, which is just in the AZ.

Again using the long endfed, I started on 80m and got 9 callers. In between, I catched a few S2S on 40m. That is the main reason I use this non-resonant endfed, change band, press autotune and GO.

After that I went to 60m SSB (8 Q’s), 40m SSB (7 Q’s) and ended with 30m CW (2 Q’s). I had to stop then, because I was already one hour behind on my schedule.

BUT, I gained some time by trying out a new parking spot for my next summit, ON/ON-013.

ON/ON-013, Bois de Hodinfosse - 568m, 6 points

I have activated this summit 4 times before, using the parking spot indicated by G4OBK, and then walking a steep slope for 30 minutes.

I had seen on the maps that in the village of Arbrefontaine, one can drive the road called “Le Calvaire” to a much higher altitude than I used to do. Now take care, because almost all roads are called “Le Calvaire” over there, hi … see map below (source: Google Maps).

If you see this view to your right , you know you have the “right” one, although technically it is the “left” road on the map, hi.

The white structures are the stations of a Calvary or "Way of the Cross". More info about them is here (in French): 

At the start of the road, there's a sign saying it is a dead end street, but you can drive this road to this parking spot 50.316070, 5.841752, turn your car and park at the downward side.

From there it is less than 500m walking to this operating position 50.314296, 5.848018.
It is a much easier walk, with only 25m ascent, and the operating spot is at 560m, so well into the AZ.
From there, you also have a nice view over the area below since it is an open field.

On this summit, I wanted to try my new QCX Mini, a 17m model. 
See my posts about this little marvel here and here and here.

Power was from a 3-cell battery box, the antenna a half-wave “Fuchs” antenna (length 8.9m), sloping from abt. 6m above ground to 0.5m (tied to the arm of my chair … ensuring “armchair” copy, hi).
A 4m counterpoise completed the setup.

The Fuchs tuner plugs directly on the QCX Mini, so no feedline losses. I didn’t have any RF feedback problems like others reported, but I did notice a “raspy” sidetone that I don’t have using the rig at home on an external antenna. An advantage of this is that the raspier the tone, the better my Fuchs tuner is tuned, no need to look at the LED.

First I called on 18.092 , but despite being spotted on SOTAwatch, I got only one reply, from UR5IRM, who gave me a 559. More calling … NIL replies. The band was probably not at its best, so it was time for plan B.

Adding 2.2m of wire to the antenna, and retuning my Fuchs tuner, I started CQ’ing on 14.062, with reduced power of 4W, and reduced RX sensitivity of about 1 S-point.

I almost fell off my chair when the first reply was from no one else than … ZL1TM, Andrei in Auckland, New Zealand ! 
He was a good 539 with me, and he gave me a 509.
That was the first ever ZL in my SOTA activator log. WOW.

Further QSO’s with OH5RP, EA5K, EA7GV, OH6JUM, EA7TG, SV2OXS and YL2TQ proved that “abusing” a QCX on the “one lower” band is certainly feasible.

To please the non-CW chasers, I switched to the KX3 + my short endfed (9.15m) to calll a bit more on 40m SSB, and ended the activation with 21 QSO’s in the log, including 2 S2S.

ON/ON-010, Baraque Fraiture - 651m, 8 points

Last summit of the day was another “parking lot” operation at ON/ON-010, parking position is 50.253133, 5.731574 .

Had there been snow, that lot would have been full, but now it was as empty as can be, and parking was free. The temperature was a nice 18.5 °C.

I set up my short endfed again, and filled my log with another 26 QSO’s on 20/30/40/60m, mixing SSB and CW. And then it was time to take the long drive home.

Some statistics:

I drove my car for a total of 6 hours and 50 minutes, and I was out in the open for 7 hours and 5 minutes, of which I played radio for 3 hours and 50 minutes.

Total driving distance 588 km, using up almost a full tank of gas, costing about 55€.

Activator points +42 (now at 1299), S2S points +64 (now at 3333), and Chaser points +52 (now at 15269)

And that concludes my report of a most enjoyable SOTA day trip

73,

Luc ON7DQ