ON7DQ Friedrichshafen 2022 - Day 7

The Ham Radio !

The highlight of the trip is always the HamRadio, or at least it should be ...

I was disappointed at what was shown, or rather, what was NOT shown.
A large number of companies were not present (Kenwood, Yaesu, Elecraft, Wimo, Difona,  Begali ... the list goes on and on).  

But lets not focus on the negative ... look  who was waiting outside the door ... Phil, G4OBK, who I consider my mentor in all things SOTA. Phil helped me a lot with tips and tricks when I started SOTA in 2014. We had a nice chat while we waited until the queues at the entrance were gone.

I was lucky that at least one company hadn't given up on us : QRP Labs !

I picked up a QDX kit, and a hat and coffee mug that I ordered before.
It was nice to meet Hans "live" again, but time to chat was rather short ... many people were waiting in line, to worship their "God of QRP" ;-)

Here a few more pictures I took at the fair. 

Members of the High Speed CW Club at work 

While the main hall seemed rather empty, the flea market was (almost) as busy as always.

A nice magnetic loop by SV1FJF

A nice display from the Enigma Museum (see their website)

At noon, the QSL wall was the place to be for all SOTA activators and chasers.

Here some of the familiar (and famous) faces of the SOTA community ... 

Many more pictures can be found in this thread on the SOTA reflector

 

And of course at 14:00 there was the SOTA meeting in room "Österreich" (Austria).
This was the first time Sylvia, OE5YYN, could take here role as "organizer' of this meeting, after two years of Covid trouble ... It was good to see all these friends again.

Two presentations were given: a rather long one (hi) by Juerg HB9BIN and a shorter one by Ingo DH5ST. Slides from those presentations can be found here.

After the fair, we went across the street to the Zeppelin launch site (free parking at pos 47.674769, 9.507116), and watched the landing of a Zeppelin airship, it was quite impressive. I made a 6 minute video of the landing, send me an e-mail if you would like a copy of that video.
We didn't fly in a Zeppelin ... 280 Euros (times 2) for 20 minutes looked a bit too expensive. 

Continue reading ... go to DAY 8

or

Go back to overview HERE

ON7DQ Friedrichshafen 2022 - Day 5

From Freiburg to Friedrichshafen

Day 3 and 4 were spent in Freiburg, with a visit of the city and some shopping. No SOTA.

Also on day 5 no SOTA activations, just driving from Freiburg to Friedrichshafen, but with some SOTA summits in view .

We made a short stop at the Titisee.

From the lake, one can easily see the summit of Hochfirst, DM/BW-015, which I have activated twice.

At noon we arrived at the nice motorway stop called "Rastanlage Hegau West" (GPS: 47.861237, 8.785930). The food is not cheap but of excellent quality, and from the terrace you can see the three "Hegau Volcanoes". See pictures below. There is also a small unmanned tourism office where you can pick up free tourist documentation and maps of the region.

I have activated two of those summits on a previous trip, but the Hohentwiel Fortress was closed that year because of falling rock (see my previous report here). 

The plan was to activate it for sure this time, but the weather was too hot, and we decided to go shopping in an airconditioned shopping mall instead, hi.

So far for my SOTA plans.

Continue reading ... go to DAY 7

or

Go back to overview HERE

ON7DQ Friedrichshafen 2022 - Day 2

Two summits in the FL/VO region

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

I wanted to do this summit for a long time. On previous trips I had to cancel it a first time due to bad weather, and a second time because of excessive delay on my schedule. 

Third time's the charm, so this time it had to work !

The track is well documented on the SotaMaps page, so no need for more info here. 
Just drive to the parking spot for Rothenbachkopf, at position 48.004907, 6.978345 , and follow one of the possible tracks. We took the 'long path' , since the final stretch is less steep.

It was quite windy at the summit, but the temperature was still above 20°C.

I set up a little below the actual summit, to get some protection from the wind, and away from the many visitors on the top. I had a nice view towards the "Batteriekopf" (not a SOTA summit).

I kept this activation short, so only 14 QSO's in the log here.

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

This summit is a very busy place, many visitors, so I set up my station at the "stone field" which is still in the AZ. Even there there are a lot of visitors.

I kept the activation short, since we had to drive to Freiburg im Breisgau after that. In 25 minutes,  I made 23 QSO's on 40m and 20m SSB, and 1 S2S on 20m CW.

Once settled in our B&B, we went for dinner and boy, did that beer taste good !

Continue reading ... go to DAY 5

or

Go back to overview HERE

ON7DQ Friedrichshafen 2022 - Day 1

A HOT start !

We left Ostend at the early hour of 05:45 local time, to avoid the traffic around Brussels. But we started on a Sunday morning, so the traffic was exceptionally calm. No problems anywhere. We took a breakfast at a stop along the motorway, and arrived at our first summit at 10:30 local time.

NOTE : we filled up with fuel in Luxemburg, but to our surprise, it was no longer cheaper than in Belgium ... the price was exactly the same !

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

There is a public parking spot for this summit just behind the water reservoir at position 48.990785, 6.065031, in the village of Arry.

If your GPS doesn't know this place, set it first to position 48.991577, 6.065272, along the D67, then take the small road going south, called 'La Moutotte'. The parking spot is just some 50m away. You can check this place in Google Streetview.

From the parking spot it is a fairly easy walk to the summit, it's 2 km with only 50m ascent. Part of it is in the shade, which was welcome, since the temperature was already high .

The real summit is not on the track, but the AZ is wide enough to find a nice place in the shade. I set up the long endfed as an inverted-V and started my first activation. 

Note the 'pancarte' with QR codes next to my backpack, the codes point to pages on my blog explaining what SOTA is, in three languages (French, German and English). During the trip the codes have actually been scanned several times by people passing by. Try it for yourself using your phone and the following picture! Click the picture to enlarge it.

The log showed 32 QSO's, mainly 40m and 20m SSB,with an incredibly high number of S2S contacts : 17 in total !

After the first summit, we briefly visited the town of Pont-a-Mousson, where our B&B was. But it was way too hot to stay long, so we quickly went to the second summit.

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

For summit info, see my previous report here.

I found a place in the shade to set up, but the temperature was now 34 °C !

Despite the heat, I managed to get a few good pile-ups, and the log showed 44 QSO's, mainly SSB on 40m, 20m and 17m, and  I finished the activation with some CW on 20m. Also 6 S2S contacts made me a happy activator.

Continue reading ... go to DAY 2

or

Go back to overview HERE

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

OST Morse Box V3

 The OST Morse Box Software V3.0

The OST Morse Box project started in march 2020, during the first Covid-19 lockdown.
Since then, a lot of changes and additions had been made, like adding a decoder and a basic AF generator.

Read  about how it all started here

And have a look at different implementations by ONL12523 , ON7DQ and OTHERS

Gil (ONL12523) who wrote the software for this project still had some ideas .. so he wrote a complete new Windows Control program. To make it all work, also the Arduino firmware had to be updated, and the result looks like a completely new project.

But … best of all, no changes to the existing hardware were needed !

All you have to do is update the firmware in the Arduino Nano, and download the new Windows program. All files are on github here.
The Arduino program is open source, the Windows program is not.

Updating the Arduino is very simple, with the help of a program called Xloader. Open the correct file from the folder where you downloaded Xloader, e.g. OST_Morse_V300.ino.eightanaloginputs.hex
Check that the Device and Baud rate look like in the picture below, and select the correct COM port, then hit ‘Upload’. After a few seconds your Arduino should have the new firmware, DONE!

The new Windows Control program is written in C# with Visual Studio 2022.
What are the new features ?

The basic Form (or screen) contains the Menu structure, and depending on what you select, the gray area is filled with the appropriate application.

At the top the status of the connected Morse Box is shown (WPM, character spacing etc). On the left are the different menu items. The bottom line shows the connection to the Morse Box, and some other controls.

 All Menu items are well explained in the manual, available on github , in ENGLISH and in DUTCH.

We will just have a look at the latest addition to the bag of tricks: the GAME menu.

Here you can test your progress in sending CW, a skill that is often forgotten in a CW course.

You can use a paddle or the built-in touch paddle if you like, but the game is best played with a straight key, to check if you have the correct dot/dash ratio, and the correct spacing.

Text is shown on the screen, and you have to key it with the key or paddle, connected to the OST Morse Box.  The decoder in the Morse Box will decode it and send it to the program (NOTE: you don’t need to build the receive decoder board for this).

The Characters selection box determines which characters appear in the randomly generated text. Under Random test select if you want 1 character at a time, or words up to 8 characters.
The text to be keyed is shown in grey, the letter to be sent in white.

With the Morse Box, the correct letter is keyed (key, paddle or touch paddle), To make sure the decoder is synchronized correctly, you will be asked to send the letter 'O' at the start of each exercise, this letter is not counted in the score.

A correctly received letter turns green and the next letter white. In case of wrong reception, the letter turns yellow and there is a second attempt. When Retry preview is selected, the Morse code is displayed. After a second error, the letter changes to red and moves on to the next letter.

With Preview selected, the Morse code is also shown on the first attempt.

In the example above, the plotter is set to display the Morse code as dots and dashes, and the scale is also shown per 100 mS and per 1 second (long bars).

Correct characters and errors are counted and after pressing Stop the score is calculated (in %).

Have fun with our newest version, and let us know if you like it.

73 de Luc and Gil

 

Two short activations

On the way back from a weekend trip to Germany, I did two short activations.

One included a new summit for me, the recently added ON/ON-031.

ON/ON-026, Le Mont d'Henri-Chapelle - 354m, 2 points

This was my 6th activation of this summit, it's an easy drive up. Just park at  the picnic bench at 50.677059, 5.920479, in the "Rue du Moulin a Vent".

Operating at the bench makes for a comfortable "outdoor shack" !

The log showed 19 QSO, with 7 S2S.

Next was a new summit for me, since on February 1st, 2022, two Belgian summits had been deleted, and two new ones added.

ON/ON-031, Château d'eau de Havelange - 343m, 2 points

Also an easy drive up summit, since the top is very flat all around the water tower.
A suggested operating spot is in a cul de sac road next to the N63 highway, at position 50.353498, 5.343849

There is lots of space for antennas, but there may be a funny smell from all the waste that people dump there ... 

Suddenly we got a visitor ... it was Jean-Pierre, ON7ZM, one of Belgium's top chasers. His QTH is only 20 km from the summit. Here he is talking to the YL.

21 QSO's and an incredible 10 S2S contacts made me a happy activator ! ;-)

73 de Luc, ON7DQ

Winter SOTA Tour 2022

 Winter bonus tour .. and infecting a friend with “the virus”

Rob, ON4ROB is a member of my local radio club in Ostend, Belgium.

When staying on Lanzarote (EA8/LA), on two occasions, he had already done a few SOTA activations, which got him started with 2 activator points.
This winter, he went out on his own to do one summit with bonus points (ON/ON-010 Baraque Fraiture), bringing him to 13 points.

Seeing his slow progress  , I thought “how can this go a bit quicker?”, so I invited Rob to do a two day tour of all ON summits with winter bonus points. And he accepted !
I booked a nice apartment on AirBnb and started packing.

DAY 1

On february 27, on a calm sunday morning, we set off at 06:00 local time, having a ‘brrrr cold’ breakfast (but with HOT coffee) along the way.

Our first summit was ON/ON-001 Signal de Botrange, the highest point in Belgium.
WX was cold but sunny (temp -1 °C). We set up seperate stations, some 100m apart. I was using my ‘long’ random endfed (21.3m) with 9:1 unun. Rig KX3 at 15W.
Rob used his FT817 at 5W, and a resonant endfed for 20m. I operated on 80m SSB, then 60m and 40m CW, to reduce the chance of interference to Rob’s station.
The sun in my back helped a little, but the cold wind did not do much good.

After this one, we went to ON/ON-009 Iverst, ON/ON-013 Sur Clair Fa, where we used only
one station, taking the mike in turns. We kept it short there, so not much to tell.

On the last summit of our first day, ON/ON-013 Bois de Hodinfosse, we set up seperate stations again. We had a nice operating spot in the sun, with a nice view over the valley in front of us. We stayed more than one and a half hour on the summit.

Difficult to see in the picture, but Rob was sitting under the yellow arrow, his fishing pole is seen to the left in the open field.

After qualifying all four summits (and me making a total of 123 QSO’s) we arrived in our BnB in Vielsalm at exactly 18:00 local time. First part of the mission accomplished !

DAY 2

Leaving our BnB at 09:00, I did a quick activation of ON/ON-010 Baraque Fraiture, while Rob tried to make a few QSO’s on 2m SSB, but no luck there.

Then we went to the nice spot behind the radar tower at ON/ON-004 Bois de Hazeille.
We set up my station only, and Rob made enough QSO’s to qualify, after which I had a nice pile up on 40m SSB, and made a few QSO’s on several other bands as well, 54 QSO’s in total, a nice catch.

Then it was time for our last summit, ON/ON-006 La Croix Scaille.
First we climbed the ‘Tour du Millénaire’.
Rob had visited this tower before, not knowing that it was also on a SOTA summit !
Rob tried his portable DMR rig, without luck. Then moving to 2m FM, we had just one contact with Jean-Luc ON4LS in Namur, at a distance of 60 km.

Jean-Luc sent us some pictures of the 70 cm repeater in that tower, and a nice view of the antenna and the solar panels, which a regular visitor can not see (unless you have a drone, hi).

Then it was time to go back to ground level for some HF work … I logged 43 more QSO’s, a mix of SSB and CW.

One of those QSO’s was a S2S with Guru, EA2IF (SK). Little did I know that it would be our last QSO.
R.I.P. my friend Guru, glad to have you in my log on the last day that you were out on a summit …

The way home was not so succesful as our activations, we had a lot of traffic jams and detours, so it took us 4 hours to get back to our home town Ostend.

But I had helped Rob to get to a nice score of 73 points, so I was very satisfied!
And my log showed 244 QSO’s in total, so I hope I made many chasers hapy as well.

I think I have now really infected Rob with the SOTA virus, because a few days after our trip , he was already out on his own again, to activate a one pointer, ON/ON-027 Pottelberg.
And in a few months time, he will be back on Lanzarote, so look out for EA8/ON4ROB.

73 and see you on another activation !

Luc ON7DQ and Rob ON4ROB