ON7DQ SOTA Trip to Friedrichshafen 2022

12 days on the road ... from Ostend to Friedrichshafen ... and back !

Summary

This was my fifth visit to Friedrichshafen, and the fourth time I drove over there in my own car. This year I was also joined by my YL, so I had to reduce the number of summits on this trip ... but the  number was not zero, hi. This was more or less our trajectory:

(source : Google Maps)

We left Ostend at 05:45 local time on June 19th 2022. It was a Sunday morning, so we had no traffic problems whatsoever.

We returned to Ostend on June 30th at 19:00 local time, this was on a weekday, so we had heavy traffic, and on top of that : heavy rainfall for the last 60 km of the ride.

We drove 2153 kilometers, this used up some 300 € in fuel !

I had planned 12 summits, but in the end I only activated 10 of those.
Compared to the last trip in  2019, where I did 20 summits, not a bad result after all.

Equipment used

KX3 and homebrew Li-Ion battery pack 4S2P with an automatic voltage reducer, so I could operate at 15W (12W above 18 MHz) all the time. I had a small computer fan to cool down the KX3 when needed.

Antenna's :  9.15m or 22.30m random wire endfed, with 9:1 UNUN and 4m counterpoise.
Coax 3.5m RG-58.
Cheap PC-headset with PTT box.
Palm Pico paddle or homebrew relay contact paddle, both were used.
6m fishing pole from Decathlon (missing the thinnest element, so really only 5.5m).
Cellphone with data plan and Sota Spotter app.

Here is the list of activated summits followed by some statistics ... click on the Day x link to go directly to the report of the respective summits.

Day 1

FL/VO-056, Bois le Comte (Vittonville) - 400m, 2 points

FL/VO-060, Butte de Mousson - 382m, 2 Points

Day 2

FL/VO-080, Rothenbachkopf - 1316m, 10 points

FL/VO-001, Le Grand Ballon de Guebwiller - 1424m, 10 points

Day 5

From Freiburg to Friedrichshafen

Day 7

The Ham Radio fair with the SOTA meeting

Day 8

DM/BW-854, Höchsten - 838m, 8 Points

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

Day 9

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

Day 10

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

Day 11

DM/HE-102, Felsberg - 514m, 4 points

Day 12

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

After this trip my totals were : 1449 activator points, 17981 chaser points and 4962 S2S points. The trip also resulted in 6 new uniques and 4 new completes.

My total activation number is now 271 summits, of which 157 are unique ones.

So far, I have made 6370 qso's as an activator, and 3798 chaser qso's.

Continue reading this story on ... DAY 1