ON7DQ Friedrichshafen 2024 - Day 3

This day, we started our visit of the "Romantische  Straße" in the city of Würzburg. There is ample parking space at "Die Residenz", pos 49.793101, 9.937305

The walk included the very nice garden which is part of the Residenz, some remarkable buildings in the old center of Würzburg and the old bridge over the Main river with a nice view of the Marienberg Fortress.

In the afternoon, we went to the "Center of the European Union". Over time, this center has moved a couple of times, and since Brexit (2020) it is now in the village of Veitshochheim, parking is at pos 49.844993, 9.904720. 

There are no spectacular views there, but it just felt special to stand in the middle of ... nowhere, hi.

Of course, I didn't plan this short visit without a hidden agenda ... there was a SOTA summit nearby !

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

This is an easy drive up summit. If you like, you can drive up to the model airplane field (Modellflugplatz on the map), park your car at pos 49.893487, 9.872576, and set up your station, the parking is in the activation zone. But just to have some exercise, we walked to the bench at pos 49.897451, 9.868335, close to the real summit. It's an almost flat 600m walk. First you encounter this summit marker.

Then a bit further is a comfy operating spot.

This summit brought me 27 QSO's , and one third of those were S2S, wow!
Map of the QSO's, still no DX in sight ...

That's it for day 3 ... continue reading ... go to DAY 4

or

Go back to overview HERE

ON7DQ Friedrichshafen 2024 - Day 2

On day 2 we traveled from Villmar to Eisingen near Würzburg.
This was the APRS track.

Along the road, just two SOTA activations.

DM/HE-003, Großer Feldberg - 879m, 10 points
POTA DE-0034 Taunus Nature Park

I activated this summit also last year, and had to use my umbrella to protect myself from the sun. This time I needed it because it was raining ...
I parked in the same spot as last year, pos 50.231557, 8.458064, near the Feldberghaus restaurant.

I made 30 QSO's here, including 3 S2S. Here a map of the QSO's

During my activation, my XYL went for a walk, and visited the Falkenhof (see https://www.falknerei-feldberg.de/ , website is only in German). It's an animal shelter for birds of prey.

Here a few of those birds.

DM/BM-377, Geiersberg - 586m, 4 points
POTA DE-0028 Bayrischer Spessart Nature Park

In the afternoon, we made a stop at this summit. Parking at pos 49.900014, 9.426681, where there is place for two cars, just left and right of the track entrance.

From there, it is only a short walk to the summit. I set up my station in view of the big transmitting tower, which is in the AZ.

I started in the rain , under my big umbrella, but after a while the rain stopped, and I could put the umbrella aside.

27 QSO's with 2 S2S made this another good activation.

Continue reading ... go to DAY 3 

or

Go back to overview HERE

 

ON7DQ Friedrichshafen 2024 - Day 1

We left our hometown Ostend at 05:26 local time, and as usual, we had our breakfast along the road.
This is the APRS track of the first day, total distance was 479 km.

First stop was the city of Königswinter, which is along the Rhine river, and near the big city of Bonn.
It is also near the Siebengebirge, which is a POTA park, and contains a few SOTA summits (Ölberg, Asberg).
Königswinter is famous for it's Drachenfels ruins, so we took the oldest cog railroad in Germany (see https://www.drachenfelsbahn.de/en/), to have some nice views of the Rhine and the surroundings. 

The Drachensfels ruins were a bit disappointing, only half of a tower is left, and it is not accessible.

In the distance, I noticed a big white "mushroom", which looked more interesting.
I found out later that it is the Fraunhofer Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques FHR in Wachtberg (see https://www.fhr.fraunhofer.de/en.html ).

DM/RP-426, Montabaurer Höhe - 545m, 4 points
POTA DE-0037 Nassau Nature Park

After the visit we drove to pos 50.430147, 7.747459, which is near the Köppel tower. The tower and the parking spot are not in the activation zone for SOTA but would be ok for POTA.

So after a quick lunch, we walked some 100m to the West, where the forest track rises to 530m altitude, and found a nice place in the AZ to set up.

I had to make it a short activation because it would be a long day ... we still had still some driving to do.
I made only 12 QSO's here, including 1 S2S, no DX.

After another stop in the Fashion Outlet in Montabaur, we drove to our AirBnB in Villmar, where we arrived around 18:15.

 I was surprised to see a whole bunch of VHF/UHF/SHF antennas on the property !
They were all small Yagi’s, helical antennas, cross dipoles, satellite dishes,  etc. As it turned out , our host was David, DL0227SWL. He’s a very active SWL, and you can imagine we had some nice conversations.

[EDIT : since January 2025, David has obtained a Novice license, (Einsteigerlizenz), callsign DN9DM ]

NTC QSO Party

I am a member of the Netherlands Telegraphy Club (NTC, see their website) 

As it happened, the monthly NTC QSO Party was on this day !
If I wanted to keep my position in the rankings, I just had to participate.

Now, we brought our own dinner, which saved us from going out and search  for a restaurant.
That way I could get ready for the QP in time. The house had a nice garden to set up my antenna, and I had a large “operating desk” on the terrace. 

What could I wish more? Oh yes, the Xmas lights  … David was so kind to put them on, even if it was in the middle of June … how cosy, hi.

And as I still wanted to enter the “mechanical key” section, I had packed my miniature Travel Cootie, it fits inside a pill bottle!

I was using an Icom IC-705 at 10 Watts, a modified ATU-100 autotuner, and a 22.3m random endfed wire in an inverted-V configuration (max. height 5.5m).

I didn’t make as many QSO’s as I could have made from my home station, but still got 9 contacts, which included SM, PA, DL, I, and OK. 

So I still had some good old CW fun, mission accomplished !

At 22:00 local I packed my stuff and then it was bedtime ... this had been a very long day !  

Continue reading ... go to DAY 2

or

Go back to overview HERE

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.

EDIT : I had to move the 3.5mm headphone connector up and to the right, to accomodate a Heil HTH DUAL-I headset, which has a connector with a fixed spacing for MIC & PHONES (so called K-type connector).

The slanted position also makes sure that the headset connector doesn't clash with the speaker button. This is how the panel looks now:

One problem : when plugging in an extension for the headphones, the internal speaker is disabled. Solution : I added a small external amplified 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

All Benelux Summits

Some time ago, I posted a list on the SOTA Reflector, with all the parking spots I have used for the ON, PA and LX regions. I also added the average walking time to an operating spot in the AZ (not necessarily the exact summit).

While there is a description for each of those summits on this blog, it may be handy to have this list in one easy to find place, so here we go ...

NOTE: if you click on the link under Code, you will get the summit info page on the SOTA website.

If you click on the link under Name, it will bring you to my blog post where that summit is featured. 

EDIT 2022:  two summits in ON are no longer valid for SOTA (-017 and -024), but two new summits have joined the list (-030 and -031),  Also LX has retracted one summit (-002), and replaced it by a new one (-005).

EDIT 2024: I finally got to activate the last missing summit from my list, ON/ON-030, so the list is complete again.

EDIT 2025: I found a driveup possibility for ON/ON-010. I changed the list accordingly

ON - Belgium

Code	Name	Alt(m)	Points	Activations	parking pos GPS	Avg walking time
ON/ON-001	Signal de Botrange	694	8	334	50.501208, 6.093355	zero
ON/ON-004	Bois de Hazeille	586	6	169	50.033017, 5.422366	1 minute
ON/ON-006	La Croix Scaille	503	6	178	49.954181, 4.844514	zero
ON/ON-009	Iverst	693	8	174	50.408333, 6.369756	zero
ON/ON-010	Baraque Fraiture	651	8	264	50.253750, 5.731595	zero
ON/ON-011	Sur Clair Fa	601	8	199	50.337468, 5.972298	zero
ON/ON-013	Bois de Hodinfosse	568	6	178	50.316049, 5.841739	10 minutes
ON/ON-016	Les Aisances	445	4	101	49.756654, 5.199489	zero
ON/ON-018	A la Plate	395	2	86	50.313697, 5.528644	10 minutes
ON/ON-019	Bois de Javingue	365	2	91	50.155342, 5.281790	20 minutes
ON/ON-021	Plantis de Mesnil	306	2	104	50.177280, 4.916743	5 minutes
ON/ON-025	Burteaumont	455	4	128	50.400523, 5.979388	zero
ON/ON-026	Le Mont d’Henri-Chapelle	354	2	143	50.677059, 5.920479	zero
ON/ON-027	Pottelberg	159	1	91	50.765075, 3.699555	zero
ON/ON-028	Noordelijke terril Waterschei	199	1	62	51.006741, 5.537109	30 minutes
ON/ON-029	Terril Ste-Barde et Tonne	241	1	72	50.658570, 5.560859	20 minutes
ON/ON-030	Terril de l'Hougarde (ouest)	246	1	7	50.393966, 4.301502	20 minutes
ON/ON-031	Château d'eau de Havelange	343	2	13	50.353498, 5.343849	zero

PA - Netherlands

Code	Name	Alt(m)	Points	Activations	parking pos GPS	Avg walking time
PA/PA-003	Observant (Sint Pietersberg)	170	1	149	50.806349, 5.679418	25 minutes
PA/PA-006	Signaal Imbosch	110	1	85	52.037021, 5.990766	10 minutes

LX - Luxembourg

Code	Name	Alt(m)	Points	Activations	parking pos GPS	Avg walking time
LX/LX-001	Steekammchen	456	4	96	49.97120, 5.95437	10 minutes
LX/LX-003	Kiirchbësch	422	4	73	49.89187, 6.22486	15 minutes
LX/LX-004	Widderbierg	387	2	72	49.648870,6.319931	10 minutes
LX/LX-005	Preventbüsch	436	4	21	49.711169,6.166424	zero

SOTA Winter Tour 2024

 

This years’ winter tour is almost an exact copy of last years’ tour, except for the last summit, read on …

 I had planned to take my friend Geert, ON5GL on this tour, to introduce him to SOTA. He’s already a seasoned POTA activator and an excellent CW operator, so adding SOTA would have been easy.

But the weather predictions were not good for the weekend of March 2 & 3, so we had to postpone to the last possible weekend to get the winter bonus points, March 9 & 10. Alas, Geert was not free that weekend, so I set off alone, like I have done many times before.

Three of the summits on this tour were activated by me for TENTH time !
(ON/ON-001, -010 and -011)

 I followed the same route as last year, and on the first day I activated these summits:

ON/ON-001 (Signal de Botrange)

ON/ON-009 (Iverst)

ON/ON-011 (Sur Clair Fa)

ON/ON-013 (Bois de Hodinfosse)

ON/ON-010 (Baraque Fraiture)

 On day 2 :

ON/ON-004 (Bois de Hazeille)

ON/ON-006 (La Croix Scaille)

ON/ON-030 (Terril de l'Hougarde (ouest)), which was a new summit for me. With this one, I have again activated all Belgian summits, and have all of them them complete as well.

So here we go, on to the first summit …

 

Day 1

 ON/ON-001 (Signal de Botrange)

The day started at the unholy time of 05:10 local, when I left my home town of Ostend. I had my breakfast along the road, and I arrived at the first summit at 08:20. Using my KX3 Go Box, I was QRV in under 4 minutes, just put up the antenna, connect and GO !

And surprise, with temperatures around 10°C , the ground was not frozen, so I could actually put a pin in the ground for my fishing pole. 

I used the long wire to start off with some 80m QSO’s.
Then followed two large pile-ups on 20m CW and 40m SSB.
In total I made 64 QSO’s in exactly 1 hour, great ! This included 2 S2S.

 

ON/ON-009 (Iverst) 

I went to my ususal parking spot, but surprise again here : a large part of the forest had been cleared !
I felt a little naked, setting up against … well, just some open space.

36 QSO’s here, with 3 S2S.

 
ON/ON-011 (Sur Clair Fa)

For this one, I wanted to try a new approach via the village of Logbiermé. I wanted to park here : 50.342190, 5.963991, then walk some 700m to this position 50.330823, 5.977015, which is North of the trig point and in the activation zone.

But I got in trouble with my navigation system, coming from the East, it sent me into a small farm road, then some forest roads which became more and more difficult to drive … only to be stopped by a forbidden sign after some time. Why they didn’t put that sign at the start of that road I don’t know, but I had to return, and went to my regular parking spot at 50.319998, 5.972385, also along a forest road near the horse riding school of Mont-le-Soie.

I'll do my homework a little better next year and try again ... hi.

Last year the last stretch of that forest road was very muddy, so I wanted to avoid that (ask Paul M0PLA why … see his report here : https://m0pla.blogspot.com/2019/07/sota-european-tour-2019-day-1.html )

But this time, it didn’t look that bad (I think), and I managed to drive through the few wet patches without problems.

First I had my lunch, sitting in the sun near my car, but that was about the last sun I saw that day ...

After lunch, a short walk to a clearing in the forest which is in the AZ, and I was on the air …
28 QSO’s, and 6 S2S made this a very good activation.

ON/ON-013 (Bois de Hodinfosse)

No problems here, except for a cold wind blowing up the slope at my regular operating spot.
35 QSO’s here, with 7 S2S.

 The clouds became more and more threatening .. so it was time to go the last summit of the day …

 

ON/ON-010 (Baraque Fraiture) 

I set up on the deserted parking area. In half an hour I made exactly 30 QSO’s, which included 4 S2S.

Then it started raining, so  I quickly packed all my stuff and drove to a restaurant near my AirBnb in St-Ode,  had a good meal … and filled up the empty spaces with a nice dessert well earned , hi.

 

 Day 2

 ON/ON-004 (Bois de Hazeille)

 

I described my new operating spot last year, so I went the same route. This day was also the UBA Spring Contest 2m phone/CW, so I took also another Go Box I made, containing an IC-705, a Palm Mini paddle and the microphone. It has a voltmeter, fixed connections for antenna, microphone and headphones, and an additional switched external speaker, since when you plug in a headphone connector, it cuts off the internal speaker.

The voltmeter is for use of my 4-cell Li-Ion external battery, which ensures I will get 10 Watts out of the IC-705. When fed with only 12V , it has only 8 Watts.  I will make a more detailed description of what I did, later on my blog.

I used a 4-element log-periodic (by Anjo Antennas) for VHF/UHF. I set up the antenna on the 6m mast, it's a bit difficult to see in above picture, so follow the BIG arrow , hi.

All in all, it was not worth the trouble, I made only 2 QSO’s on 2m SSB, and lost over 30 minutes in doing so.

So I quickly switched back to the KX3 and the random wire, and made 38 more QSO’s in another 30 minutes !
Only 1 S2S on this one, but that was enough to catch the points for my and the other summit.

 

ON/ON-006 (La Croix Scaille)

 

Along the road to the Tour du Millénaire, also a lot of forest had been cleared. Strange to have a view in the distance for a change … sorry, forgot to take a picture.

 I set up at my usual spot near the “Ferme Jacob”, and had a nice activation. In 40 minutes I made 34 chasers happy, and also catched 5 other summits.

 

ON/ON-030 (Terril de l'Hougarde (ouest))

 

I had postponed activating this summit because it’s not in the safest area of Belgium … and it’s a black slag heap full of thorn bushes … so it’s not the most pleasant experience.

But since it was the only summit I hadn’t activated yet, and I had already chased it, I had to go at least once right ?

 I parked at the position indicated by Peter, ON4UP on the summits page : 50.393966, 4.301502. There is place for just one car near the electricity pylon.

From there it is only a short walk ‘around the corner’, to get access to the short but steep ascent to the summit. One can cross the field, but it is very uneven terrain, so I chose to walk around the field and follow the path between the field and the vegetation. I recorded my track, you can download it from the SMP or from SOTL.as

 

The climb was rather dangerous, the center of the path was full of leaves, which made the whole thing a bit slippery. Good shoes and a walking stick are no luxury !

 At the top, the view is nice, but there is not much space for antenna’s.

I started with my 10m antenna: 5m wire on the 5.5m pole and a little Fuchs tuner.

All the trouble was quickly forgotten when my first callers in CW were no other than … Gary W0MNA and Martha W0ERI, that felt so great !
Some more DX followed, with another nice surprise : TI5JON from Costa Rica !
All with only 12 Watts and 5 meters of wire … incredible.

After 10 QSO’s on 10m , no more calls … so what to do?

My little “Fuchs tuner” can only tune 10m or 20m.
I did have the 10m wire in my backpack, but there was no space nor time to put it up like it should be … the clouds were showing that it would start to rain soon …

So I quickly draped the wire over some branches, and the wire got stuck somewhere halfway … and I ended up with a kind of “double inverted vee” (I enhanced the picture to show the wire).

The SWR was ok, and it must have worked, I made another 8 QSO’s on 20m SSB in just 4 minutes.
Someone wrote on the SOTA Reflector that you don't need a pole (but I can't find it back right now) ... I'm beginning to believe him, hi.

Alas no S2S on this one … but one can’t have it all , right ?

At the end, a light drizzle came up … time to pack up and go home …

 

So far for my winter tour 2024 … I hope to do it again next year !

73,

Luc ON7DQ