ON7DQ (KF0CR) HAM Radio Blog: June 2026

As usual, I left my home QTH very early, at 05:17 local time. I had chosen to start my trip on a Sunday, to have the lowest possible traffic.
I had my breakfast along the highway, after the first 200 km. Then I still had a ride of another 200 km to arrive at the first summit around 08:45.

DM/RP-187, Wildenburger Kopf - 670m, 6 points (POTA DE-0022/0026/1015)

This is an 'almost drive up' summit, there is a large parking at 49.775906, 7.254521

From there it is only a 5 minute walk to the "Aussichtsturm Wildenburg" on the summit.

I set up my station near the lookout tower, and even being there on a Sunday, I didn't see any living soul during the whole of my activation. On arrival, the temperature was 24°C.

I started sitting close to the tower, but after a while, I got into the sun, so I moved to another corner under the overhang. There I used a bin as a comfy table to put my rig on.

Since we are having the 2m CW/SSB Challenge in 2026, I did set up my "Hourglass Antenna" at the end of my activation, and could make four 2m CW QSO's.

In one hour, I made 30 QSO's with 6 S2S. Here a map of the QSO's.

DM/RP-158, Erbeskopf - 816m, 8 points (POTA DE-0022/0026/1015/0623/0858)

This is an other drive-up summit, only 17 km away from the first.
Parking is available in front of the gate to the military installation, position 49.729775, 7.090396.

This summit is completely in a military area, so it needs a permit, don't forget to request it, about one month in advance. It can all be done via e-mail. See info on the summit page.

I found a nice operating shelter near the lookout tower (go left just past the lookout tower).

I had a real "shack on the summit", and could sit in the shade, isn't that nice?

By now, the temperature had risen to 31.7°C

Again, I made 30 QSO's here, with ** S2S

***

Continue reading ... go to DAY 2

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Go back to overview HERE

ON7DQ Trip to Friedrichshafen 2026

This is the report of my SOTA/POTA trip to Friedrichshafen, the SOTA Dinner, the HAM RADIO fair and more ...

If you stumbled upon my blog by accident, and don't know what SOTA means, read this first : What is SOTA?

A few acronyms you will encounter a lot in this report :
QSO : a live contact between two radio amateurs
QTH : the city where I live, or the place where I stay temporarily
XYL : my wife (= eX Young Lady)
S2S : summit-to-summit contact, between two radio amateurs that are on a different summits
P2P : park-to-park, same as above, but between two radio amateurs in different parks
AZ : Activation Zone, the area that is no lower than 25m below the top of the mountain

Summary

This was my ninth visit to Friedrichshafen, and once more it was a "solo" trip.

My XYL had already used all of her vacation days for our trip to Tenerife (see this report).

This time, I was on the road for 11 days, I drove 2066 km, using 185€ of fuel.

I stayed in 6 different AirBnb's in the following places:

Bitche in France, then Bühl, Vorderfalkau, Friedrichshafen, Karlsruhe, and Föhren, all in Germany.

The weather was very hot all the way, so I had to cancel a few summits, and replaced some summits, where the walk would be too exhausting, by easier drive-up summits.

I activated 17 SOTA summits, 26 POTA parks, and 1 bunker for BOTA (Bunkers On The Air).

Most of those were combined activations, only 1 park on the way home was a separate activation.

Some statistics for SOTA

This trip added 128 activator points.

Also adding 496 chaser points, 608 summit-to-summit points, 10 new completes, 10 new activator uniques and 23 new chaser uniques.

SOTA is not a conpetition, but it's a fun game between Peter, ON4UP, and myself, to be the number one in the S2S (summit-to-summit) ranking for Belgium. So I'm number one for the moment ... that is until Peter gets on the road again, at the time of writing , he's only 325 points behind, hi.

Equipment used

IC-705 in Go-Box + ATU-100 Autotuner

For this trip I took again the Icom IC-705 in it's Go-Box.
The SatRover setup for QO-100 didn't see much use last year, so I left it at home this time.

Antenna's : 9.15m random wire, with 9:1 UNUN and 4m counterpoise, and an Hourglass Antenna for 2m CW/SSB.
Coax 5m RG-58 (one each for HF and VHF).
ATU-100 autotuner (built from a kit).
Sony headphones, K6ARK mini microphone.
Palm Mini paddle (green edition).
6m fishing pole from Decathlon (missing the thinnest element, so really only 5.5m).
Cellphone with data plan and Ham2k Polo for logging/spotting.

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

DM/RP-187, Wildenburger Kopf - 670m, 6 points (POTA DE-0022/0026/1015)
DM/RP-158, Erbeskopf - 816m, 8 points (POTA DE-0022/002 6/1015/0623/0858)

Day 2

FL/VO-197, Hochkopf - 429m, 2 points
FL/VO-191, Helfenstein - 363m, 2 points

FL/VO-048, Grand Wintersberg - 581m, 4 points

Day 3

DM/BW-047, Badener Höhe - 1002m, 10 points (POTA DE-0007/0009/1016/0558)

DM/BW-067, Brandenkopf - 945m, 10 points (POTA DE-0007/0009)

Day 4

DM/BW-001, Feldberg - 1493m, 10 points (POTA DE-0004/0007)
DM/BW-002, Herzogenhorn - 1415m, 10 points (POTA DE-0004/0007)

Day 5

DM/BW-015, Hochfirst - 1190m, 10 points (POTA DE-0004)

DM/BW-193, Schächer - 921m, 10 points (POTA DE-0004)

Day 6

DM/BW-854, Höchsten - 838m, 8 Points
The SOTA Dinner

Day 7

The Ham Radio fair
The SOTA Meeting
The SOTA booth

Day 8

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

Day 9

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

DM/BW-846, Burg Hohenzollern - 850m, 10 points (POTA DE-0948)

Day 10

DM/RP-433, Rehberg - 564m, 4 points (POTA DE-0016)
DM/RP-171, Röster Kopf - 708m, 6 points (POTA DE-0022)

Day 11

POTA BE-0513 Verdronken kinderenvallei Nature Reserve

and going home !

Driving maps are from https://aprs.fi/

QSO maps are from https://www.sotadata.org.uk/nl/map/

Summit track maps are from https://www.openstreetmap.org/

Continue reading this story ... go to DAY 1