LA/AH-014 Toåsen

A new activation of Toåsen was made last Saturday. It was a beautiful day, sunny and temperatures around 15C. Toåsen is an easy summit to activate. From the parking at Alværn, it is only around one kilometer to walk and 80 meter to climb. It is not a "real summit", it is just a relatively flat forest area, which gives no feelings of being at a summit. Nevertheless, it fulfills without any doubt the 150 meter prominence requirement. Thus, it is valid for SOTA activations, and that's what's important!

This was the fourth activation of LA/AH-014. The previous ones have all been CW-only activations. I therefore decided to start working SSB, and then CW.

In the start of the activation I was surveyed by the police helicopter which circled slowly around me three times in about 100 meter altitude (a new experience!). This caused quite a lot of noise, which in turn made it difficult to pick out signatures from the pile-up.

After all chasers were worked on 20 meter SSB and CW, I QSYed to 30 meter and worked some more stations. I then QSYed to 40 meter, but no QSOs were obtained. Finally, I made some calls on 2 meter and 70 cm, with no results. Totally 43 QSOs came in the log

DXCCs: CT, CU, DL, EA, EI, F, G, HB9, LA, OE, OK, OM, ON, SP, S5, YO, YU.

LB/OS-001 Grønliåsen

Yesterday it was time for the monthly two-meter activity contest. I decided to be active for about an hour from LB/OS-001 Grønliåsen, which is about a two kilometers walk from my home QTH. The antenna was a SB270 3 el yagi from SotaBeams. It is claimed to have a gain of approximately 6dBd. The rig was a FT-817ND. In addition I also used a 50W linear amplifier.

In an hour I had worked 11 stations, mostly locals. Not that impressive, but it nevertheless fun. Best QRB was only 203km (I also heard stations in SM7, OZ, and SP, but sadly they did not hear me…). At 18:20z I had to go QRT in order to be out of the forest before dark.

DXCCs: LA and SM.