Varingskollen, LA/AH-013

Varingskollen was activated yesterday. This is one of the summits which easily can be reached by public transportation (followed by a hike!). Just take the train towards Gjøvik/Jaren/Hakadal to Varingskollen station, and you are around 1.5 km away and 360 meter below the summit. However, I came by car and parked at the station.

I started the activation at 30 meter and worked 14 station in about 30 minutes. After having worked all who called me, I QSYed to 20 meter SSB, then to 40 meter SSB, then to 80 meter SSB, then to 2 meter FM, and finally to 70 cm FM without obtaining any QSOs.

DXCCS: DL, F, G, HB9, OK, OM, PA.

You can see more pictures at flickr.

PS. When you are on the summit, remember to log the geocache GC1NMG8 – Varingskollen 2^nd edition.

Kvitberget, LA/OL-184

Almost 8.5 months without a SOTA activation is a very long time. On June 11 I had fortunately once again the opportunity to activate a summit. Due to limited time, I chose a summit which is reached easily,
Kvitberget – LA/OL-184.

I also activated Kvitberget two years ago. As last time, I parked at Rudlandsseter (toll road, fee: NOK 30,-)., which is less than one kilometer away and around 80 meter below the summit. The last time, it was very convenient to mount the antenna pole to the trigonometric point. Now it had unfortunately been removed, but I found a small pine which was an excellent substitution. I mounted the antenna (13 meter longwire as an inverted L, three counterpoise wires, and MFJ-16010), keyer, microphone, and power. Then, I realized that the power cable had broken… Sad. Luckily, the internal batteries in the FT-817 was newly charged, and these had to be used during the activation. Therefore, I used the default power setting (2.5 watts). But 2.5 watts were shown to be sufficient.

I discovered that the six meter band was open to S5 and southern part of DL. Thus, I started with working some QSOs on six, because Kvitberget is located within a relatively rare locator (JP41). After a while, I QSYed to 30 meter, then to 20 meter SSB, and finally back to six meter. It was by the way fun to be the first activator the SOTA chaser DJ5AV worked on six. Before I left the summit, I also worked one LA on 80 meter, and made some calls on 2 meter and 70 cm. As usual, no QSOs were achieved, neither on 2m nor 70cm.

All I all, a really fun activation. A total of 13 DXCCs were worked (1-80, 11-30, 7-20, 2-6).

DXCCs: DL, F, G, GW, HB9, I, LA, OE, ON OM, OZ, S5, YL

Amadores, EA8

This was not a SOTA activation (it was a HOTA - Hills On The Air, hi, hi). Nevertheless, it was great fun. One week from March 28, we were on a vacation at Amadores, south at Gran Canaria, EA8. I brought my FT817 and a MFJ-1899T whip antenna with me. In addition I also had some (long) wire and a MFJ-1610 antenna tuner - just in case the 1.6 meter whip antenna should behave like a dummy load.

Our hotel was located along a hill, and the top of the hill was just a few hundered meters away. It showed to be a great QTH. The ten meter band was open, and during slightly more than an hour operation, the FT-817 and whip antenna gave me 18 QSOs with excellent reports from 9 DXCCs. All but one were on SSB. In conclusion, EA8/LA1EBA/P will certainly be QRV the next time we visit Gran Canaria.

DXCCs: DL, EA3, F, G, I, PA, S5, UT, 9A

More pictures can be found at flickr.