European Vacation Part 2

I was too busy and tired yesterday to update my blog, that's because it was a busy day. I attended the Ham Fair in Friedrichshafen for the first time and was favorably impressed. The Ham Fair is very well organized and in addition to the goodies I was able to meet some old friends and make some new ones.

Another thing on my mind for this trip however was to activeate three local summits. My primary decision was when would be the best day to do it. The forecast for Saturday was 50% chance of rain and Sunday was 100%. This made the decistion easy. So after lunch, my XYL and I went back to the hotel room, changed into activatoion clothes and headed out. My plan was to activate three summits:

DM/BW-348     Gehrenburg

DM/BW-349     Aacheck

DM/BW-350     Rinkenburg

All summits are within a 20 mile radius of Friedrichshafen. I activated them in numerical order.

I won't belabor the activations. They went smoothly for the most part, but a few observations. First, the surrounding area is beatiful. The drives down the narrow roads and paths that have existed for centuries certainly has an Old World feel.

      Summit of Gehrenburg, Summit Rock in Background

                            Summit of Aacheck

           Operating from Rinkenburg

All three of these mountains have large summits. The areas are heavily forested with plenty of nice places to operate. The last activation, Rinkenburg was heavily was more dense that the other two. I choise a place just below th summit in a meadow thath had been cleared by logging. As you can see in the picture, I used a stump for a shack desk.

Another lesson learned is that 40m is the best SOTA band for Europe. Forty metters defiinitely attracts  the most chasers and 20 meters is much less productive, 34 of 51 QSO's made in total or 66% , were on 40 meters.

So it was very good day. Friedrichshafen and SOTA points, enough said.