by Thomas (DM1TBE)

Some time before Easter I noticed that I am close to 1000 QSOs at my favourite place at the “Kalte Feld”, a POTA and SOTA activation zone and would soon qualify for the POTA Kilo Award. I like the Kalte Feld for the quiet, spacious area with a hut that is vending traditional basic food and beverages – which in Germany usually means good beer and different sausage types (and other stuff – to be fair). I already wrote some articles about the history of the area and my activations.

• Quick test of my new SOTAbeams Band Hopper III antenna at a POTA/SOTA location
• Guest Field Report: Germany has a new POTA activator!
• Quick test of a homemade 20-meter band antenna at a beautiful POTA location

The conditions at the activation zone are quite good. I have made 2 activations there with more than 100 QSOs (and many smaller), so I thought it should not be too difficult to complete the required QSOs in one day.

DAY 1

The weather for the Easter weekend was expected to be one of the first warm and sunny days this year. So, on Easter Sunday, I headed to the area to get the last missing 49 QSOs for my POTA Kilo Award. Easter hiking has a centuries long history in Germany. This and the nice weather made the area quite crowded. The close airfield for gliders was busy and the whole time while operating there they were in the air above.

The barbecue places and outdoor seating around the mountain hut were busy but happily the bench some meters away that I am normally using, was still available.

I wanted to start with an end-fed half-wave antenna for the 20m band, tied to a 10 meter (33 ft) fiberglass mast. This is a very easy and quick to deploy antenna and I like it, especially if there is not too much space for antennas with a larger footprint. Since it’s a straight vertical, it also has a higher chance for DX contacts – when the conditions allow that. The antenna is Open Hardware and you can find further details on GitHub.

The mast was tied to the bench and the antenna was raised. Besides the comfort, the possibility to tie a mast to it is the second reason why I am always looking for benches.

The conditions were far from being perfect, and it took me 40 minutes to get 18 CW QSOs on the 20-meter band. Switching to SSB wasn’t a big help either, and I soon gave up with only 3 additional SSB QSOs in the log.

I had brought another antenna with me that I wanted to try. The 10 meter (33 Ft) fiberglass mast also has the perfect height for a ¼ wave vertical on the 40-meter band. So I cut 5 wires to a length of about 10 meters (33 ft) and connected 4 of them together at one end with a cable lug and attached another cable lug to the vertical element.

I then used the basis of the JPC-7 antenna for the coax plug and for connecting the vertical element and the radials. There are a lot of articles and videos about ¼ wave vertical antennas. But the information is usually about either elevated and resonant radials or random length ground radials. I wanted to have resonant radials, but I could not be bothered with carrying all the stuff nearly 2 miles to a summit for elevating 4 x 10m (33 ft) wires, so I simply left them on the ground.

My idea was to try a full size vertical for the 40 meters band with resonant radials that still is portable and fits to my existing equipment.

The SWR was quite nice being close to 1.0 : 1 at the CW portion of the band, so I started operating.

The conditions were similarly difficult as on the 20-meter band. It took me 25 minutes for another 18 QSOs.

As it became increasingly cloudy, I checked on my mobile and saw that rain was approaching fast. Since I had roughly 2km or 1.5 miles descent ahead of me, I stopped abruptly with just 10 QSOs short of the POTA Kilo Award.

A bit disappointed, I called it a day.

DAY 2

I could not leave the missing 10 QSOs for long. The very next day, Easter Monday, was a public holiday in Germany. And as the weather started nice, I again made my way to the activation zone.

With only 10 QSOs missing, I wanted to try something else: Bringing directivity to a summit. I am not quite keen to carry a heavy-duty mast and a Yagi, Moxon or Hexbeam to a SOTA summit, but found another interesting approach: A ¼ wave vertical array with a parasitic element as a reflector. The idea is quite simple, and Mister DX Commander explains it very good in a YouTube video, but there are other.

Basically, you put a reflector about ¼ wavelength behind your ¼ wave vertical antenna. The reflector should be about 5% longer than the actual antenna. The radials and vertical element of the reflector should be shorted. So, I prepared a pack of 2x 5 radials of 5 meters (16.4 ft) each, ground spikes and telescopic whips, also about 5 meter (16.4 ft).

The design is very similar to a Yagi but applied to vertical antennas. The theory says that you can expect a gain of about 4dB over a single element vertical antenna.

The area around the activation zone was as crowded as the day before. Even the bench 150 meters (about 500 ft) away from the actual BBQ-places that I used the day before was taken. Luckily, there is another idyllic place not too far. It didn’t take too long to set up the vertical array for the 20-meter band.

While I got the SWR down to 1.3 at 14.1 MHz at the radiating ¼ wave vertical, the SWR at the reflector wouldn’t come down below 2.9.

I started operating, and the conditions did not improve compared to the day before. I had pointed the array towards Spain. Spain is quite active in hunting POTA and SOTA. Also, I am learning Spanish and wanted to practice it. There isn’t much written about the terms and phrases to be used in a QSO, so I have no idea if the hams understand me. But they usually respond when I speak Spanish, so it seems to work—though sometimes they reply in English, and I’m not sure why.

If you could point me to Spanish CW and SSB QSO phrases and acronyms, I would be very grateful.

After 30 minutes, I had only 10 QSOs in my log. The last contact was a bit tricky. It started with F/AE…. I never spotted a callsign starting with AE in the wild and thought I misunderstood EA, as EA for Spain is a very common callsign to hear in Germany. However, it was from Carlos AE2W, a viewer of Thomas’ activation videos – what were the chances! Thanks, Carlos, you completed my Kilo Award!

A friend sent me a screenshot from the Reverse Beacon Network and except one station, I was received everywhere else, but not where I was pointing to. Quite disappointing.

I have taken the SOTABEAMS Band Hopper III, a linked dipole for 20,30 and 40-meter band with me for hell and high water. It took only about 10 minutes to replace the vertical array with the Band Hopper antenna. I moved a kHz up for a better distinction between the two antennas and started again with CW on the 20-meter band. I was keen to see a comparison. It wasn’t much better than with the vertical array before, and I made only a further 7 CW and 5 SSB contacts on the 20-meter band.

With some time left, I switched to the 40-meter band, where I added 19 CW and also 19 SSB contacts, totalling 60 QSOs – well above the required 10 for the POTA Kilo Award. It seems conditions at least on the 40-meter band had improved compared to the day before. Many thanks to all chasers.

However, I am unsure about my conclusions.

Back at home, I checked the Reverse Beacon Network again, and it still shows only one receiving station in Spain. However, my log for the second day contains 6 stations from Spain, 3 with each antenna. So, I felt that the Reverse Beacon Network is not a reliable tool which means further testing is required, maybe with WSPR or a digital mode such as FT8/4.

Also, the comparison was not meant to be scientific, but the lack of receiving station at the Reverse Beacon Network made the test a bit ….random.