LA/BU-165 Haraldsberget

Finally, at last a bunch of new LA summits has finally been released. Norges Kartverk released digital maps a few years ago (for free), and all SOTA summits for many counties have now been identified (Oslo, Akershus, Østfold, Hedmark, Oppland, Vestfold, Telemark, Aust-Agder, Vest-Agder, Finnmark, and the southern part of Hordaland). Among the new summits, is a “summit” (actually, hill is a more correct word), at Hurum peninsula south of Oslo. I have already activated the other summits at Hurum, and it would be fun to activate this one as well.

A little bit south of the summit is the nature reserve and flora-fauna area LAFF-421. Unfortunately, the activation zone ends just north of LAFF-421. Since these areas are disjoint, a common activation is impossible.

I parked at Hurum Golfklubb, around 1km away and 180 meter below the summit. I followed more or less the perimeter of the golf course to N 59.546090, E 10.450536, which is the trailhead of a clearly marked (blue marks) which takes you to the summit. Except for a very steep part, it is an easy ascension.

It was not suitable to put up a dipole at the summit itself (a GP hadn’t been difficult, but I would like to be able to operate on several bands). Therefore, I found an excellent position around 30 meter away (and 5 meters below) the summit. (The rig was FT-817ND.)

I started to work 20 meter SSB. Six QSOs came quickly in the log. Then it was quiet, the conditions must have changed, I QSYed to the CW part of 20 meter, and 20 minutes later I had only got F6EAZ in the log. I then QSYed to 30 meter, which resulted in seven more QSOs. Before I went QRT, I tried 40 meter. SSB didn’t result in any QSOs. However, CW gave me 13 QSOs! Before leaving the summit, I also made a few calls on 2 meter with the usual result; no response. This sums up to 27 QSOs from 13 DXCCs.

DXCCs: DL, ES, F, G, HB9, OE, OH, OK, ON, OZ, SP, UA, YO.