Off to England and Wales

I'm now all packed up and ready to go to England and Wales with LA1ENA, LA1KHA and LA1DNA. We will activate SOTA summits every day from today until Friday and we will attend the GQRP convention Saturday before heading home Sunday.

International SOTA Weekend

The upcoming weekend is the International SOTA Weekend and I plan an overnight activation of the summit Vestre Hoppefjell from Saturday afternoon. I will bring a sleeping bag and camp at the summit.

If you want to work me you could listen for me at the frequencies listed below or look for my spots at sotawatch.

21.285MHz
14.285MHz
7.125MHz
5.928.5MHz
3.660MHz

Weekend trip with portable operatons in the snow

Yesterday Aage LA1ENA and I returned from a weekend trip to the Sveinsbu cabin and the nearby summit Sveinsbuvarden. It took us nearly two hours by skis to reach the summit. We erected two HF antennas, a 88ft doublet and a wire vertical, and tried to make it comfortable in the snow while calling CQ SOTA. I worked 12 stations on 40m, 20m, 80m and 60m SSB and Aage worked about 20 on 40m and 30m CW.

Although it was windy and a few degrees bellow zero it was raining! The rain froze instantly on our clothing and all of our gear. At the end my hands were to numb to operate the cellphone so I couldn't selfspot my last QSYs on sotawatch. We had planned a long activation but after a while we were freezing so we decided to head for the cabin.

When we arrived the cabin it was -8°C inside. We lighted the oven and a lot of candles and after some hours it was almost too hot inside! We erected a temporary random wire antenna outside the cabin but the result was rather poor. Best DX from the cabin was 5B4AIF on 40m SSB worked with 5w.

On our way back to the parking place Sunday we stopped at the summit and did some calls on 2m. I worked LA5OGA on 145.550MHz before we headed home.

Portable operations this weekend

This weekend Aage LA1ENA and I will visit one of the cabins owned by the Norwegian Trekking Association. The trip to the cabin will probably take us 1 - 1.5 hours by skis. We plan to activate the nearby SOTA summit on both Saturday and Sunday and will also try to be QRV from the cabin Saturday night.

Aage normally starts on 7.032MHz cw and I will probably try the following frequencies: 7.118MHz ssb, 5.398.5MHz ssb, 3.660MHz ssb, 14.285MHz ssb and 145.550MHz fm

We will announce our activities on sotawatch

Photo by DNT

IOTA Contest

During the RSGB IOTA contest this weekend I worked some stations from a SOTA summit on Hinnøya, EU-033. The propagation was not very good and I soon decided to abandon the contest and work some regular sota chasers instead.

More about the trip on my SOTA blog:
http://la1tpa.blogspot.com/2009/07/latr-016-storhornet.html

GQRP Convention

In October Aage LA1ENA, Kjell LA1KHA and myself will attend the GQRP Convention in UK. We will arrive Liverpool on October 20 and drive to the Lake District where we plan to activate some SOTA summits. The convention is on October 24. The trip back home to Norway is scheduled to Sunday 25 October.

http://www.gqrp.org/rishworth.htm