After EI/IS-050 Torc Mountain the day before we took EI/IS-127 Carhoo Hill 02/Jan/2019 with great condx. Worked a lot US and VE. Thank you GM6ZAK, EA2CKX, EA2DT, G0VWP, G4AFI, M7AFI, DL5AWI, G3OCA, IK2LEY, DG1NPM, F4HZR, S54KD, DL3KZA, AB4PP, N4EX, AA1VX, SV2RUJ/P, VE1WT, SP9ETA, KB9ILT, (18 MHz!). I can highly recommend Ireland. What a great landscape!

Unfortunately, at the moment I don't always get the chance to publish everything up-to-date. Therefore now also with a delay of 1.5 years. Our hotel was in Killarney, so it was a good idea to activate EI/IS-050 Torc Mountain on New Year's Day, 01/Jan/2019. Condx sucked, but I wkd: 2E0WDX /M, IK2LEY, EI3KA/P (S2S), EA2CKX, EA2CE and SA4BLM.
We needed 4,5h from the parking lot to the top and back. Great to chat with EI3KA/p some 30km away on EI/IS-095 on 7 MHz, 14 MHz and 145 MHz.

Heute morgen staunte ich beim Frühstück nicht schlecht. Es gibt Änderungen bzgl. des 6m Bandes.

Die Weltfunkkonferenz 2019 der Internationalen Fernmeldeunion (ITU) hat für den Amateurfunkdienst in Region 1 eine sekundäre Zuweisung im Frequenzbereich 50–52 MHz beschlossen. Im Hinblick auf die dazu noch erforderlichen Anpassungen der Frequenzverordnung, des Frequenzplans und der Anlage 1 der Amateurfunkverordnung (AFuV), mit denen die Nutzung des Frequenzbereichs 50–52 MHz im Sinne des § 5 Abs. 3 des Amateurfunkgesetzes (AFuG) und des § 9 Abs. 2 der AFuV mittelfristig gestattet werden soll, wird in Abstimmung mit dem Bundesministerium für Verkehr und digitale Infrastruktur (BMVI) und dem Bundesministerium der Verteidigung (BMVg) die vorläufige Nutzung des Frequenzbereichs 50–52 MHz im Amateurfunk ab sofort bis zum 31. Dezember 2020 im Rahmen der nachfolgenden Nutzungsbestimmungen geduldet.

Maximal zulässige Sendeleistung  im Frequenzteilbereich 50,000 - 50,400 MHz:
750 W PEP für Inhaber einer Zulassung zur Teilnahme am Amateurfunkdienst der Klasse A
100 W PEP für Inhaber einer Zulassung zur Teilnahme am Amateurfunkdienst der Klasse E

Maximal zulässige Sendeleistung  im Frequenzteilbereich 50,400 - 52,000 MHz:
25 W PEP für Inhaber einer Zulassung zur Teilnahme am Amateurfunkdienst der Klassen A und E

Today I drove to my nearest SOTA summit (DM/SR-012, Schaumberg) to test my recently bought Raspberry Pi4. Up to now I had a Pi3, but it was too slow sometimes. Today I wanted to do a dedicated SOTA activation in FT8. I have done FT8 from a summit for SOTA before, but always only besides SSB. With -1°C and freezing rain, it was exciting not only for the operator but also for the technical team. Spoiler: When I came back into the warm with the Pi4 it cracked and the blade from the fan broke out of the case at all 3 points. Well, a new one does not cost 2 Euro in China. Of course including shipping. On 40m I was heard well, also in England. But after 15 minutes there was only one station in the log: S57ILF. In SSB my log would probably have been well filled already. On 30m it was better then. At least 5 stations came into the log. Because it was very cold I skipped 20m and called a few times on 17m. K1KZ came into the log.

Today I had planned to activate 4 SOTA summits. That was quite optimistic, because I still had to drive 460km (round-trip) to Belgium.

When I arrived at DM/RP-003 "Schwarzer Mann" (just before the belgian border) it went really well. I had left my FT2 handheld radio at home, but that didn't bother me then. The pileup on 40m was massive. Thanks to all chasers. But then it went a bit strange and I had some problems to solve.

When I wanted to change to 20m, my antenna got caught in the tree at a height of 10m, so that I had to force it down. Then it tore and I lost some meters of my 40m antenna in the tree. I still had about 3 meters of cable in my emergency package. So I extended the antenna provisionally to be operational for 40m on the next summit again. I then drove the 20 minutes to Belgium.