SOTA Winter Tour 2026 - Day 3

Day 3 - Schleiden (D) to Ostend 

ON/ON-001, Signal de Botrange - 694m, 8 points + POTA BE-0385

WX : Sunny and 9°C

Parking position : 50.501208, 6.093355

I arrived at the parking lot at 10:00 local time, and there were already a lot of visitors, so I decided to take my stuff, and walk a little to the track behind the summit marker. There it was very quiet, I saw just one man walking his dog, and that was it ...

The weather was great, and so was the activation.
Having a number of POTA chasers helped to accumulate 50 QSO's in 50 minutes!
Icing on the cake was another 4 S2S. Here a map of the QSO's.

A happy activator enjoying the sunhine !

After filling up on fuel in Eupen, it was time for the last summit of this trip.

ON/ON-026, Le Mont d'Henri-Chapelle - 354m, 2 points
+ BOTA B/ON-0482/0483/0484/0485/0486 

WX : Sunny and 16°C

parking position : 50.677059, 5.920479 , in a small road called Chemin du moulin à Vent.
As a courtesy for the SOTA activator, they placed a nice picnic bench there.

I started my "OTA" adventure with SOTA, but since there are no summits where I live, I also joined the POTA programma. Now, as it happens, I live in an area which is literaly infested with bunkers from both World Wars, so it was not so difficult to combine a numer of POTA activations with BOTA = Bunkers On The Air.

I saw on the BOTA map that my last summit could also be activated for 5 nearby bunkers, so this again  brought in some extra chasers.

But first it was time for lunch, so I set up my 2m Moxon at the picninc bench, and had the autokeyer call CQ while I had my lunch, both in CW and in SSB.
I spotted myself on the SOTA and BOTA clusters.
I turned the Moxon in all directions, but what do you expect ? NIL replies again.

So after lunch, I quickly set up the HF antenna, and made 39 QSO's in 1 hour, including another 5 S2S and 2 DX contacts with the USA.

Well, that concluded my Winter Tour, it took me 3 hours and 7 minutes to get home, thanks to the typical traffic jam around Brussels, and a few other places on the highway.

See you on another trip soon,

73,
Luc - ON7DQ

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