ON7DQ Friedrichshafen 2022 - Day 12

One more summit and then home !

As the title says ... we left Trier, filled up on fuel in Luxemburg and drove to the new LX summit I hadn't activated yet.

LX/LX-005, Preventbüsch - 436m, 4 points

Strange enough, the road to the summit that comes from the north, starting at 49.726124, 6.167494 along Route 101 (Rue de Fishbach), had no forbidding sign when I looked it up in Google Streetview, but now there was a sign. [EDIT : Google Streetview has since been updated and now also shows this sign]

On the other hand, it seems that the sign on the south side of the summit was removed, so now one can approach from here : 49.707111, 6.170286 . 

The parking spot is next to the radio tower, pos 49.711169, 6.166424

A short walk takes you to a wooded area where you can set up in the shade.

Now, as you can see in the above pictures, I had bad luck ... technicians were placing new cellphone antennas on the tower. They were very friendly and let us pass without problems. But they probably had cut off all cellphone transmitters, which meant I had no connection at all !

So this was an activation "old style", no self-spotting possible.
I used only CW, and hoped that RBN would pick me up.

And it worked, I was spotted on 40m 20m and 17m. 17 QSO's in the log, and thanks to Fabio IK2LEY/P, also one S2S.  

Nothing more to tell than that we had a long drive home, heavy traffic, and also heavy rainfall on the last 60 km. But we made it !

This was the last page of this story ... 

See you for another SOTA story soon ... 73,

Luc ON7DQ

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ON7DQ Friedrichshafen 2022 - Day 11

From Heidelberg to Trier

Another day with a lot of driving, but still time to do one summit along the road.

I had found two summits that I needed for complete, Melibocus and Felsberg, both near Zwingenberg, north of Heidelberg. According to my info , DM/HE-314, Melibocus would be a drive-up summit. But at some point there was a sign that said it was forbidden for cars. Since we were in a bit of a hurry, we returned and took the other sumit that I hoped would be a drive-up, and it was! There is a restaurant and a large parking area on the summit.

DM/HE-102, Felsberg - 514m, 4 points 

The parking position is here 49.730188, 8.685477. The stone tower can not be climbed.

Being on a weekday, the whole place was deserted, so I quickly set up and started my activation. I had two good pile-ups on 40m and on 20m, resulting in 37 QSO's in the log, and three S2S.

After that it was time to drive to Trier, our last stop before going home. We had a BnB near the Moselle river that was very nice.

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ON7DQ Friedrichshafen 2022 - Day 10

The city of Heidelberg and a SOTA summit

The morning was spent visiting the city and the castle in Heidelberg. We parked in the parking at the Karlsplatz (7.50€ for around 5 hours), and first took the cablecar to the castle (9€ per person, including entrance to the castle).

From the castle, one has a nice overview of the historic town and the old bridge over the Neckar river.

One building in the city caught my special attention because of a sign on the wall.

I always thought that Bunsen was the man of the Bunsen burner (what else?), and Kirchoff had done nothing but make the laws of current nodes etc. ... and spectral analysis had the name Fourier written on it ... but back home I looked it up, and yes, the sign is correct, but this seemed to be about something else than Fourier analysis ... read more about it here.

After a quick lunch we drove to the free parking on the summit of the day.

DM/BW-114, Königstuhl - 568m, 4 points

Parking spot is here : 49.402465, 8.727815

Parallel to the parking is a road (part of the Königstuhlweg) where cars are not allowed, so I set up in a quiet spot along that road. I had 21 QSO's on 60-40-20m , a mix of SSB and CW. Strange enough, I could not catch a single S2S here.

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ON7DQ Friedrichshafen 2022 - Day 9

From Friedrichshafen to Heidelberg

A lot of driving today, but still time to activate one summit along the road.

DM/BW-484, Bussen - 767m, 8 points

This is a very nice summit. There is a large free parking here : 48.160800, 9.556214, in the village of Uttenweiler. From the parking it's a short walk, about 150m, but it is rather steep (yellow line). 

You can also go to the church (blue line), then you have some stairs, and walk to the summit from there. There are free toilets in the building near the church, the toilets at the parking were closed that day.

First we climbed the tower (the Burgruine Bussen), where you have a nice view of the area.

From the tower I made already two S2S contacts on VHF with Sylvia DL/OE5YYN/P on DL/AL-271 (distance 85 km) and Reinhard OE7RGF/P, who was on OE/TI-112. 

WOW! What a great DX of about 200 km, using only 5W, and a Chinese telescopic 5/8 λ whip.

In front of the tower is a large area with picknick benches, where I set up my station for HF.

From this position, I had three more VHF S2S contacts (DO4TE/P, OE/HB9EVF/P and OE/IW3AGO/P, another DX with 140 km!). 

Total number of contacts was 30 and this included 12 S2S QSO's, a great catch !

The rest of the day was spent on the motorways and in traffic jams ... only to arrive a bit late in our BnB near Heidelberg.

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ON7DQ Friedrichshafen 2022 - Day 8

Two summits and a museum ...

On the sunday after the fair, I wanted to activate the two nearby and easy summits, Höchsten and Gehrenberg. The weather promised to be very hot again, so we started early morning at the first summit.

DM/BW-854, Höchsten - 838m, 8 Points

This is a drive up summit, since the main road passes over it. Parking position is 47.819749, 9.402346. It's a very short walk to the bandstand on the summit, from where you have a nice view over the area. 

I went around the bandstand to find a place in the shade, and already saw another ham setting up his antenna. It was well known SOTA activator Marcel DM3FAM. 

We agreed on what bands to use, to reduce the chance of interference.

I used the long endfed and operated CW on 60m and 30m, while Marcel operated on 40m.
I had a nice run of 25 QSO's, including 6 S2S contacts, NICE!
Of course, one of those S2S was with the nearby summit of Gehrenberg, which is only 5 km away, line of sight. During the days of the fair, there are activators on these summits almost all day, and often several at the same time.

A while later, Marcel had finished his activation and came by for a short talk.

The summit of Höchsten is quite an interesting place, all around the walkways are displays of texts in German and Schwäbisch (Swabian), one of the local dialects.

See Wikipedia for some info here.
I don't think that Google Translate will be of any use to read the "Schwäbisch" ... but if you know some German, the texts are rather funny. 

Now my YL found nothing better to do than take my QR-code pancarte and hang it from one of the statues , hi.

Another property of this summit : it seems to attract the most unusual misunderstandings!

If you have followed my blog for some time, you may remember I had a funny encounter with Matt, OE6FEG on this very summit in 2019. Read that story here.

At some point, my YL was walking somewhere around the summit, and suddenly she saw the back of a man with a backpack and a fishing pole walking along the track. 

She thought I had already packed up and was leaving, so she shouted "Hey what are you doing? Where are you going ?"

She probably thought I was going  to leave her behind on the summit.
The mystery person turned around and said something like "Excuse me, did you say something ?"

Hahaha, of course I hadn't packed up yet, it was Martin, HB9GVW, who was looking for a shaded spot to set up his station. Sorry for the mix-up Martin !

Shortly after, Martin came to visit me, and we had a nice chat.

Now judge for yourself the similarities or the differences between me and Martin ;-)

I let Martin do his thing, and now I packed up for real, hi, and we moved to the next summit

DM/BW-348, Gehrenberg - 754m, 8 Points

Normally, it is forbidden to drive the forest track to the summit, but I couldn't find any forbidden sign (maybe it was overgrown ?), so I continued driving to this parking spot 47.742086, 9.423339. From there it is only 50m to the summit.

I kept the activation short, made 17 QSO's which still included 5 S2S contacts. One of those S2S was now Höchsten, which I had activated just a while before.

Then it was time to go to the city of Tettnang, to visit the old town and the Elektronik Museum.

I had been in the museum before, see some other pictures from my previous visit here.

And this is the website of the museum (in German only): Elektronik Museum

The nice City Hall

After that visit, we called it a day ...

Continue reading ... go to DAY 9

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ON7DQ Friedrichshafen 2022 - Day 7

The Ham Radio !

The highlight of the trip is always the HamRadio, or at least it should be ...

I was disappointed at what was shown, or rather, what was NOT shown.
A large number of companies were not present (Kenwood, Yaesu, Elecraft, Wimo, Difona,  Begali ... the list goes on and on).  

But lets not focus on the negative ... look  who was waiting outside the door ... Phil, G4OBK, who I consider my mentor in all things SOTA. Phil helped me a lot with tips and tricks when I started SOTA in 2014. We had a nice chat while we waited until the queues at the entrance were gone.

I was lucky that at least one company hadn't given up on us : QRP Labs !

I picked up a QDX kit, and a hat and coffee mug that I ordered before.
It was nice to meet Hans "live" again, but time to chat was rather short ... many people were waiting in line, to worship their "God of QRP" ;-)

Here a few more pictures I took at the fair. 

Members of the High Speed CW Club at work 

While the main hall seemed rather empty, the flea market was (almost) as busy as always.

A nice magnetic loop by SV1FJF

A nice display from the Enigma Museum (see their website)

At noon, the QSL wall was the place to be for all SOTA activators and chasers.

Here some of the familiar (and famous) faces of the SOTA community ... 

Many more pictures can be found in this thread on the SOTA reflector

 

And of course at 14:00 there was the SOTA meeting in room "Österreich" (Austria).
This was the first time Sylvia, OE5YYN, could take here role as "organizer' of this meeting, after two years of Covid trouble ... It was good to see all these friends again.

Two presentations were given: a rather long one (hi) by Juerg HB9BIN and a shorter one by Ingo DH5ST. Slides from those presentations can be found here.

After the fair, we went across the street to the Zeppelin launch site (free parking at pos 47.674769, 9.507116), and watched the landing of a Zeppelin airship, it was quite impressive. I made a 6 minute video of the landing, send me an e-mail if you would like a copy of that video.
We didn't fly in a Zeppelin ... 280 Euros (times 2) for 20 minutes looked a bit too expensive. 

Continue reading ... go to DAY 8

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ON7DQ Friedrichshafen 2022 - Day 5

From Freiburg to Friedrichshafen

Day 3 and 4 were spent in Freiburg, with a visit of the city and some shopping. No SOTA.

Also on day 5 no SOTA activations, just driving from Freiburg to Friedrichshafen, but with some SOTA summits in view .

We made a short stop at the Titisee.

From the lake, one can easily see the summit of Hochfirst, DM/BW-015, which I have activated twice.

At noon we arrived at the nice motorway stop called "Rastanlage Hegau West" (GPS: 47.861237, 8.785930). The food is not cheap but of excellent quality, and from the terrace you can see the three "Hegau Volcanoes". See pictures below. There is also a small unmanned tourism office where you can pick up free tourist documentation and maps of the region.

I have activated two of those summits on a previous trip, but the Hohentwiel Fortress was closed that year because of falling rock (see my previous report here). 

The plan was to activate it for sure this time, but the weather was too hot, and we decided to go shopping in an airconditioned shopping mall instead, hi.

So far for my SOTA plans.

Continue reading ... go to DAY 7

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