FM on Petru Paler

Senhora do Socorro

Sat, 14 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Three-way activation: SOTA, POTA, and WWFF.

Chasseral

Sat, 16 Sep 2017 19:05:45 +0200

Shifting weather activation.

It’s the weekend: time to pack up the family and radio and activate a summit! We headed out towards HB/NW-015 but after an on-the-go change of plans to accomodate the baby sleeping schedule we ended up doing a longer drive to Chasseral instead.

The summit is on a really nice looking ridge with no trees, and fully accessible by car. It was raining quite heavily several times on the way, making me worry about the radio part. It all stopped by the time we reached the top, but between the risk of rain and the rather cold air I didn’t want to set up a HF antenna. I had thankfully thrown my VHF/UHF handleld into the backpack so I picked that up instead.

After spotting myself on SOTAwatch and calling CQ on 2m I scored a nice QSO with Beat HB9TWG/M who was somewhere on a freeway (couldn’t quite understand all of the German :). One other quickly followed then, once I managed to open up my squelch, also heard and worked DJ5AV.

Three down, one to go – but nobody else was answering. I tried the 70cm band with no success. After moving back to 2m and calling CQ for a while longer, HB9FRA/P came back and helped complete the activation.

Finishing up, we had lunch watching the clouds go by at the Hôtel Chasseral nearby then drove back home.

Kronberg

Thu, 29 Jun 2017 20:59:27 +0200

Short and sweet with nice views and first ever 70cm QSO.

The weather was still nice (although forecasted to worsen) while returning from Säntis so we stopped for a short activation on the way. After a nice cable car ride from Jakobsbad and a quick hike to the summit, I spotted myself and called CQ. 3 QSOs quickly followed, although the 4th took a few minutes longer.

One of the first chasers on 2m was again HB9DHA, whom I had failed to contact on 70cm from Säntis. We arranged to try again, and this time it worked very well – my first ever QSO on 70cm! He also seemed happy that his setup worked.

No other chasers seemed to be around so I wrapped up and we headed back. A nice and quick activation with a great view, with one lesson learned: VHF/UHF line of sight activations can struggle to get enough chasers. It might be worth optimizing my HF setup for quick deployment (even if at the expense of efficiency).

Säntis

Tue, 27 Jun 2017 18:00:01 +0200

First FM activation and some very nice views.

Wanting to spend a couple nights with the family to celebrate my wife’s birthday, I wondered how to best combine the occasion with a SOTA activation. Using HB9SOTA’s “Bähnli-Gipfel” list for inspiration, I picked the Säntis hotel for the very nice location and easy cable car access to the nearby 10 point summit. Wanting to keep weight down and setup time to a minimum, I only brought a Kenwood HT radio and thus planned to make this my first FM activation.

Weather was forecasted to be bad and to get worse the following day, so we headed up the cable car soon after arriving at the hotel. A cloud layer made it impossible to see the summit from the valley but thankfully the cable car lifted us above it all, presenting us with a wonderful view from the top.

I spotted myself and started calling CQ on the 2m band as soon as we got there, hoping to finish before any rain started. Chasers showed up right away, although the first few QSOs were a mess on my side: having only used the radio for APRS before, I kept turning the VFO knob while attempting to increase the audio volume! A few frustrating minutes later I figured out what I was doing wrong and things got better.

One of the chasers (HB9DHA) had asked whether I was planning to also try 70cm afterwards so I did once nobody was around on 2m anymore. The calling frequency at 433.5 MHz was busy with what sounded like a digital voice transmission, so I had a look at the band plan and tuned around. I found a free spot at 434.8 MHz and… time for the second embarassing screwup! For some reason band “A” on the radio did not allow me to transmit on that frequency (still not sure why), so I kept calling CQ without actually doing anything. It took me a few minutes to realize what was going on, switch to band “B”, and try again – with no results. Oh well, at least things worked on 2m (these were my first ever FM and VHF QSOs!).

Once all the radio stuff was done, I rejoined my wife and baby and we enjoyed the breathtaking view some more before heading back down to the hotel. It was overall a very nice activation, with one lesson learned: get to know and practice using the equipment before arriving at the summit.