ON7DQ Friedrichshafen 2026 - Day 10

From Karlsruhe to Trier, 258 km

There were a lot of summits in the DM/RP area to choose from. I have activated only 16 of the 60 summits so far. I chose my first summit because it would be a complete (= chased and activated).

DM/RP-433, Rehberg - 564m, 4 points

I arrived at the parking at 09:30 local time, position 49.187562, 7.964390

Temperature was 23°C.
I followed the track by DD6FM from SotaMaps, with a small diversion.

I tried to follow the mountainbike tracks as a shortcut, but I don't think that's a good idea. Parts of that track are very steep, and there are some boulders where you have to climb over.

And what if a mountainbiker would come down at full speed ?
So when I came back down, I just followed the main paths, much easier and safer!

This was the ascending track     ...                         and this was the descent.
Can you spot the difference?

The walk was not easy, but I passed some beautiful places, like these interesting rock formations.

At the summit is a lookout tower, and beside it was a picnic bench, which was in the shade. Ideal to set up my outdoor shack.

40 minutes later, I  had logged 22 QSO's, with 3 S2S, on 40m and 20m CW and SSB.

After my activation, I climbed the tower, and had a nice view over the area.

For my second summit, I chose an easy drive-up.

DM/RP-171, Röster Kopf - 708m, 6 points

Parking is here 49.674106, 6.833372, which is in the activation zone.

There is an old worn-out picnic bench near the road, but it is useful as an operating spot. I had to take my umbrella again, the sun was burning with temperatures nearing the 30°C again.

I kept the activation short because I still had some driving to do. I made only 14 CW QSO's, no S2S.

My last AirBnb for this trip was in the small village of Föhren near Trier.  

Culinary tip : I can recommend this Italian restaurant in the nearby village of Quint.

 

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ON7DQ Friedrichshafen 2026 - Day 9

From Friedrichshafen to Karlsruhe, 258 km

Due to the broken GPS module, APRS has stopped working in my car, but this was the route as plotted by Google Maps.

I left my Bnb in Friedrichshafen at 08:45, and during the 100 km ride, I had some rain. 

But when I arrived at the first summit at, the rain had stopped. Lucky me!

DM/BW-058, Burg - 975m, 10 points

The road to the summit is again an "Anlieger Frei" road, so you can easily drive up to the gates of the deserted military installation. Parking position : 48.27195,9.02257

As it felt COLD at only 18°C, and the long grass on the path through the forest was all wet, I didn't want to walk to the viewing point, and just set up a few metres from the car.

I had 33 QSO's with 4 S2S, one of those was on 2m FM with Tom HB9EVF/P at a distance of 129 km, using only 5W from my FT1D and a Chinse RH-770 clone. Nice!

DM/BW-846, Burg Hohenzollern - 850m, 10 points

Another easy one. It seems the parking fee for Parking P1, closest to the castle, is comprised in the entrance ticket. Since I didn't want to visit the castle, I just drove to P1 and paid nothing ... hi.

Nobody bothered me. P1 Position : 48.325664, 8.963969

I first had my lunch near the car, temperature was a nice 24°C. 

 

I wanted to take the footpath to the castle entrance, and the first part looked nice.

But the second part was (still) closed for construction works, so I had to follow the main road, and watch out for the shuttle busses.

I guess it doesn't takes much longer to reach the castle anyway.

I had a quick look at the entrance gate, and then looked for a place to set up.

I thought the end of the guardrail near the bus stop looked just big enough to use it as a table for my rig. The 'no parking' sign was ideal to attach the 9:1 UNUN. A bit further, my 6m pole was holding the wire. I posted myself behind the guardrail, so I wouldn't bother any walkers or shuttle busses.

The activation went well, but after a while, a man in  a white shirt with a Burg Hohenzollern logo came to me, telling me I was on private property and a lot of other things I didn't understand.

I politely explained (in German of course) what I was doing, trying to have a few contacts with other amateurs, but also that I was off road, bothering no one, and that the forest around the castle is public walking area.

He just replied "Sie haben recht" (you are right) ... and he walked away. I continued my activation for another 10 minutes without 'local QRM' and then packed my stuff and went back to the car.

My log showed 22 QSO's with 5 S2S, not bad. All QSO's were on 20m CW, with two exceptions : I worked Michael, DB7MM/P on 40m SSB, and surprise : Rob, DL/K6KM/P was worked on 10m CW. To be fair, Rob was only 22 km away on DM/BW-041, so that must have been a groundwave contact.

After this it was time to start driving again, still 140 km to go ... and with heavy traffic.
I found my AirBnb near Karlsruhe, arrivng at 17:40. Temperature had risen to 29°C, but luckily, this Bnb had airconditioning ... wonderful.

Tomorrow still two SOTA summits in the DM/RP area.

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ON7DQ Friedrichshafen 2026 - Day 8

Going easy on a Sunday morning ...

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

NOTE : from this day on, there are no more APRS tracks, sorry. For some unknown reason , the GPS module in my car (a Garmin GPS-18 PC) had given up, maybe from the heat ? Will have to investigate when I'm back home.

[EDIT : after investigation, the GPS module was indeed dead and beyond repair. I replaced it with an older GPS box from gpskit.nl It is a bit slow to aquire a position, but it seems to work, so I'm back on APRS]

After breakfast, I left my Bnb, and arrived at the summit at 09:15. The temperature was a comfortable 25°C.

Gehrenberg is another drive-up summit, 'my' parking spot is here :  47.742628, 9.423206 , and this is already well into the AZ. To the real summit it's only a 1 minute walk.

This is the busiest summit during the Ham Radio, but not only due to the SOTA activators, but also due to the mountainbike trail that runs exactly over the summit. Expect a lot of bikers stopping by, especially in weekends.

It was early morning and the sky was overcast, so I decided to set up at the real summit. But hey, the summit was already occupied !

Christof, OE6CHD was doing an activation on 2m FM, just holding a handheld, while standing on the big rock which marks the summit. After he finished, we had a nice chat, and when he left, I started my activation. Christof was kind enough to take this nice picture of me, but sorry, I forgot to take a picture of him when he was activating.

After a while it even started to rain ... but after one minute it was already over ... so far for some cooling down.

I was about one hour into my activation when another visitor arrived on the summit, and to my surprise, it was someone I knew very well, if only from the airwaves ...

Justin , DL1MJR is another of the regular participants in the QCX QSO parties. What a coïncidence!
He's an American pilot, but living in Xanten, Germany at the time. Also his wife Diana was with him, and she's also a pilot, how cool is that. She took the picture below.

Justin disappeared in the bushes to do a quick activation, CW only with an Elecraft KH1, using an endfed antenna thrown over a tree.

A while later, he came back to say goodbye, when another well-known SOTA couple arrived. They were Andy HB9JOE and Eva HB9FPM. I was so busy in a pile-up by then, I had hardly the time to say hello (sorry guys). Off they went to find an operating spot without QRM from ON7DQ (hi).

Apart from hams & mountainbikers, I had another nice visitor. A beautiful butterfly came sitting on my backpack. Of course by the time I wanted to take a picture it was flying away, but I still caught it in the picture (see the yellow circle). 

I stayed on the summit until noon, but with all the talking with visitors, I made only 24 QSO's in two hours time. But I had 12 S2S, thanks to the many activators nearby. Also 2m was working well, I had 9 QSO's on 2m alone.

At noon I went for a pizza, and took the afternoon off to get some rest, and prepare my trip of the next day : Friedrichshafen to Karlsruhe.

By the time I got back in my Bnb, outdoor temperature had risen to 32°C again, indoor it was 26°C, still a bit warm. My XYL showed me via Whatsapp that it was also hot in Ostend, and she was sitting in the garden (in the shade of course!), with her feet in basin of water ...

Hmm, in my apartment I found only a miserable small bucket, not even big enough for one foot.

But then I thought ...hey, I do have everything from my cooler in the fridge, and a cooler is for ... well, cooling things down, right ?
There you have it, a bit of water in the cooler, problem solved ! 😊

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ON7DQ Friedrichshafen 2026 - Day 7

At the HAM RADIO Fair

I had only bought a ticket for the Saturday at the fair, so I was at the entrance at 09:00 to get the most of it. There was a long queue, but we were able to get in quickly.

I did my usual round, first the flea market, then the main hall A1, and in the afternoon I also briefly visited ASTRO, the trade fair for astronomy.

The flea market is shrinking in size every year ... this is the first hall, still looking full, but the tables are much wider apart than before. Well, It has the advantage that you don't have to squeeze between rows of people.

The second hall looked almost empty. Even an an additional partition wall couldn't hide the fact that maybe next year, one hall will be enough for the flea market.

Someone was selling digital thermometers, always good to know t was 27.3°C there, hi.

A few other iterms that caught my attention ...

In the main hall were the usual exhibitors, but also here quite a lot of companies are no longer coming to the Ham Radio. The main attraction is of course the SOTA stand !

For those that follow the SOTA Reflector, or have read the previous pages of this report, you will have noted that one of the most talked about items in 2026 is the Hourglass Antenna. There is a lot of interest in this small & light antenna for horizontal polarisation. It enables 2m CW/SSB operation with little effort, so as to participate in this years' 2m/70cm CW & SSB Challenge.
At the SOTA stand , Roman DL3TU was promoting a double version of the Hourglass Antenna.

A suprise at the SOTA stand was meeting Martin, DK3UW. Martin has nothing to do with SOTA, but he's one of the regular participants in the QCX Challenge and the QCX WARC Party. So I have one or more QSO's with Martin every two weeks or so.

ON7DQ                       DK3UW

In the afternoon was the traditional SOTA meeting, where Joe, OE5JFE explained some fine details of the Ham2k PoLo logging app. I'm using this app for some time now, but I still learned a few new tricks. Thanks Joe!

ASTRO

A visit to this astronomy fair was comprised in the Ham Radio ticket. I didn't have much time left so it was a short visit. I'm not really into astronomy, but there was an impressive display of telescopes and everything related. 

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ON7DQ Friedrichshafen 2026 - Day 6

One summit, and the SOTA Dinner !

This day, I took it very easy.

Did some shopping in the morning, and in the afternoon I prepared to go to a 'classic' summit, followed by the traditional SOTA Dinner.

DM/BW-854, Höchsten - 838m, 8 Points

This was my 7th activation here, so indeed becoming a classic.

The parking spot at 47.819749, 9.402346 is already in the AZ, but was fully in the sunshine ...a no go.

Beyond the bandstand are a number of benches in the shade, that looked much better.
I had carried a small table, so I had a comfortable setup.

I had again taken two 6m Decathlon poles, so I could set up the random endfed for HF, and the Hourglass antenna for VHF, at the same time.

 Another item that came in handy, was the double PC fan with it's own battery. It has a series/parallel switch to make it a two-speed fan. Nice to cool the rig ... AND the operator, with temperatures going above 30°C !
 

I made 40 QSO's here, with 5 S2S, in about 1 hour and 40 minutes. A very pleasant activation indeed.
I was so busy on HF that I only had time for two QSO's on 2m, one in FM and one in SSB.

The SOTA Dinner

At 18:00 local time, some 60 people gathered in the Gasthof Adler in Hefigkofen. The dinner was again perfectly arranged by Joe OE5JFE, and the people at the Gasthof did their best to switftly serve drinks and food. With this weather, the cold salad dishes were most popular ... and the cool drinks even more so !

Here I'm sitting with some SOTA friends, the picture was taken by Joe, and more pictures can be found here

After the main dish, there is always room for ice cream 😋

There was a lot of talking about SOTA, transceivers, antenna's, etc ... and the best thing is you get to meet many SOTA friends you only knew from the radio. An event not to miss !

Tomorrow we go to the Ham Radio fair.

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ON7DQ Friedrichshafen 2026 - Day 5

From Vorderfalkau to Friedrichshafen, 151 km

This day, I had planned two easy drive-ups, that I had visited several times before.

DM/BW-015, Hochfirst - 1190m, 10 points

Easy drive-up, parking spot : 47.901074, 8.185303

It was only 15km from my Bnb to the summit. I arrived early enough to grab the only bench that is in the shade. Temperature at arrival was 25°C. This was my third activation here, the view over the Titisee never gets boring.

I mounted the 9.15m endfed with one 6m pole, and on another pole was the Hourglass antenna, attached to the back of the bench, so I could operate from HF to VHF. I also carried a small table to make a comfortable outdoor shack.

22 QSO's and 5 S2S, in about 45 minutes. All 18 HF QSO's were on 40m, mainly CW.
On 2m the best DX was 312 km, nice ! 

DM/BW-193, Schächer - 921m, 10 points

Another classic, easy drive-up. Parking here : 47.888629, 8.577234, near the big TV tower.
I could park my car under the trees, and just behind the bushes is a nice picnic bench, which is in the shade.

I still had to eat my lunch, but first set up two antennas again, for HF and VHF, so I could listen for some S2S while having lunch.

I guess you better avoid this summit in a weekend, the place was full of garbage, probably people were having wild parties at the BBQ place.

My activation went well, in just over 1 hour, I had made 28 QSO's, with an incredible 12 S2S. It was clear that a lot of hams were in the area, all coming to the Ham Radio. Best DX on 2m was 247 km, again a nice result for 10 Watts and the Hourglass antenna.

I left the summit around 14:30, with a temperature of 34°C in the shade, and had to drive 100 km to my Bnb in Friedrichshafen. I arrived at 16:15, and it was already 37°C there ... it's a heatwave !

Lucky for me, the AirBnb was in a basement, and indoors it was a 'cool' 26°C. Alas, no airconditioning here, but my big tower fan helped somewhat to survive, hi.

Tomorrow a day of rest , with some shopping, only one summit, and the SOTA Dinner.

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