ON7DQ SOTA Trip to Friedrichshafen 2024

 

14 days on the road ... some tourism, some SOTA and POTA activations, the HAM RADIO, the SOTA Dinner, the SOTA Meeting and a presentation. Here follows my report.

Summary

This was my seventh visit to the HAM RADIO in Friedrichshafen, and the sixth time I drove over there in my own car. This year I had a new pair of glasses (brand new !), my new hybrid car (Toyota Corolla TS, 1 year old), and a new XYL (a little bit older, hi), so what could go wrong ?

With the XYL, I needed to insert a bit of tourism here and there, so I chose to drive the Romantische Strasse (Romantic Road), very appropriate for a newly married couple, hi.

If interested, see some info about this road here

We took a rather relaxed approach, avoiding the super busy places, so it will not surprise you that we didn't even think of trying to visit the "highlight" of this route, the Neuschwanstein Castle. We were not interested in paying lots of money, wait an hour or more in line, for a guided tour of only 30 minutes ...

Apart from the tourism, there were still plenty of opportunities to do a SOTA activation, often combined with a POTA park, or do some chasing from one of our BnB's.

We drove 2463 kilometers, this used up 201 € in fuel, so still very economical compared to my previous car (see my 2023 report here)

Equipment used

Last year I bought an Icom IC-705, not because I needed it (I have a KX3 which still does the job very well). But at home I have the IC-7300, and I like the user interface a lot. The bells and whistles of the IC-705 (waterfall, touch screen, etc) may not be of much use on a summit, but I intended to use the rig for other activities as well. As an example I used it for QRP CW Fieldday last June. Also having multimode VHF/UHF and DSTAR may be handy at times.

Now, some time before this trip I had also acquired a small QO-100 transverter called SATROVER (see info here). This needs a 144 MHz SSB/CW transceiver, so the choice was made to leave the KX3 at home and use the IC-705 both for HF and for QO-100.

I made a similar "Go Box" for the 705 as I had made for the KX3, but I wanted a smaller box this time. So I didn't put the headphones and microphone inside the box.

I did make a small "front panel" at the left side of the rig, with a power switch and voltmeter for the external battery, extensions for antenna,  headphones and microphone. All can be reached much easier than having to search for the recessed connectors in the side of the rig.

One problem : when plugging in an extension for the headphones, the internal speaker is disabled. Solution : I added a small external speaker (see the small holes just left of the rig) that I can activate with a switch. Useful to listen without headphones, or to let a visitor listen to what you are hearing ...

A Palm Mini paddle (green edition) is mounted on a small steel plate to the right side of the rig.

The plastic cover protects the rig during transport, and acts as a rain or sun cover, like in this picture.

The external battery is a homemade 4S2P Li-Ion pack (16.8V when fully charged), mounted at the back of the cover. Two diodes and a switch reduce the voltage to some 14-15V, so that I can operate the rig at 10W all the time (at 12.0V, an IC-705 only puts out 8W).

The IC-705 lacks an internal autotuner, it is not even an option to install one.
I had built an ATU-100 from a Chinese kit, long time ago (see my report here).
I didn't have a good experience with it when tuning with low power, it needed at least 10W to tune properly. There are mods on the internet which involve changing turns on the SWR coupler, but I had never found the time to do the mod.
Recently I found a video by MW0SAW where the OM made this tuner QRP-compatible, by just changing one memory location in the EEPROM, setting the minimum tuning power to 1 Watt. No hardware changes needed !
I did this simple mod, and did some test during a few local POTA activations, and it seemed to work very well, so my tuning problem was solved.

As an antenna, I used my random endfed of just 9.15m, with a 9:1 UNUN, and a 4m counterpoise. Not as good as a resonant antenna, but very easy to change bands, and it works on all band from 40m to 6m.

The other stuff was more or less the same as on my previous trips.

Coax 5m RG-58.
6m fishing pole from Decathlon.
Cellphone with data plan, I used the websites for spotting and checking spots.

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

Day 1

DM/RP-426, Montabaurer Höhe - 545m, 4 points (is also DE-0037 Nassau Nature Park)

Day 2

DM/HE-003, Großer Feldberg - 879m, 10 points (is also DE-0034 Taunus Nature Park)

DM/BM-377, Geiersberg - 586m, 4 points (is also DE-0028 Bayrischer Spessart Nature Park)

Day 3

DM/BM-380, Breitfeldhöhe - 387m, 2 points

Day 4

DM/BW-131, Ipf - 668m, 6 points (is also DE-0523 Geopark Ries UNESCO Geopark)

Day 5

no SOTA, but still some radio fun on QO-100

Day 6

DL/AM-001, Peissenberg - 988m, 1 point

Day 7

no SOTA

Day 8

DL/AL-171, Eisenberg - 1053m, 2 points  

Day 9 

The SOTA Dinner

Day 10

DM/BW-854, Höchsten - 838m, 8 Points

Day 11

DM/BW-101, Hohentwiel - 690m, 6 Points

Day 12 

DM/BW-009, Kandel - 1241m, 10 points (is also DE-0004 Südschwarzwald Nature Park)

Day 13

FL/VO-023, Le Donon - 1007m, 10 points

Day 14

no SOTA ... just a long drive home

After this trip my totals were :
1820 activator points
23662 chaser points
6226 S2S points.
This trip also resulted in 5 new uniques and 3 new completes.

My total activation number is now 334 summits, of which 184 are unique ones.
So far, I have made 8246 qso's as an activator, and 5012 chaser qso's.

Continue reading this story, go to ... DAY 1