Our 4 year old Kirian just got a brand new mountain bike and wanted to go for a long ride with his father. This was music in my ears 😎. The distance to the bird nature reserve DLFF-0755 from our QTH and back would be a little over 20km, so I thought this would be a nice ride for the boy (actually he made this distance last year). I recently invested in some new equipment and made some changes to the mobile radio station, so it would be a good opportunity to test the setup before the GoGreen season begins. My pervious GoGreen activations of the DLFF-0755 reserve can be found HERE.
Late in the morning, we arrived at the DLFF-0755 at the Ismaning reservoir, a large artificial lake close to Ismaning used as a source of water supply. I carefully chosen a location near a farmers road so as not to disturb the bird breeding, since some species of birds were already engaged into. For the sake of the birds, I couldn't use large trees in the middle of the reserve to stretch the antenna as high as possible, and this time too I had to use a 10m long pole.
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| Pheasant roosters like royal guards patrolled their area in front of us. |
My goal was to get 100 QSOs at least. The start was quite tough due to the very poor propagation conditions on 20 and 30m. So, I had to spend most of the time on 40m. The logbook slowly filled with QSOs so that I had enough time to watch the wildlife around us - a couple of pheasant roosters like royal guards patrolled their area in front of us, a couple of roe deer watched us curiously from a safe distance. The running rate improved noticeably in the afternoon when new waves of chasers called in. As I just passed the 170 QSO mark, the first big drops of an unannounced rain shower pattered around 😡. We were not prepared for it and had no choice but to pack and head home. Around 70% of the QSOs were on 40m, the CW to SSB ratio was ~50/50. Well, I'll probably have to focus on high bands next time to reach new chasers. The log has been submitted to both WWFF and GoGreen XOTA programs.
The modified set-up with FT-857 and light ZS6BKW dipole worked perfectly, however, I see some room for improvement. I might need to consider some alternative options, especially for the aerial. The homemade dipole works fine but still needs an antenna tuner to cover all of the bands.
Kirian was still full of energy when we returned. It's probably time for his first 30 km bike ride to the next XOTA. Let’s see...
Short summary and statistics for DD1LD/P:
- Date: April 11th, 2021
- GoGreen distance: 20 km by bike
- Equipment: 50W + homemade ZS6BKW
- Participation time: 3.5 hours
- Operation time: 2.5 hours
- DXCC worked: 31
- Top countries worked: DL, SP, I, OH
- Continents worked: 3 (EU, NA, AS)
- DX: NA
- WWFF areas: 1x reactivated
- WWFF reference: DLFF-0755
- WWFF-valid QSOs: 171
- Unique callsigns: 160
- WWFF activator points: 3 (+)
- P2P: some
- Notes: 70% of QSOs on 40m, CW/SSB ~ 50/50.
Mni tnx all chasers and activators fer QSO!
73, 77 de Dzianis, DD1LD/P
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