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This time the
forecasters promised a nice dry weekend with clear sky, not bad for a
field day. Also Mr. Hepburn was quite optimistic regarding the tropospheric
propagation. In our area the weather forecasters were right, Mr. Hepburn
was not.
We
started as usual on Friday
afternoon with loading our proved contest equipment in the vans.
On Saturday morning at 8:00 we met at Harti's (DL6AUI) QTH, stored the
last equipment and started our trip to our Contest-QTH, the Schneekopf
at JO50JP for the last time this year.
The weather at the Schneekopf was quite foggy and cold, we measured 6°C,
but fortunately no rain.
This time we had to choose some different locations for our antennas due
to the fact that the administration decided to build a new tower on top
of the Schneekopf, which then has 2 towers on it. The well known Telekom-Tower
and the new tourist tower which will give a very nice overview over the
Thuringian Forest but blocks the north direction for our microwave
equipment.
The setup procedure was business as usual. We got some help from our
fellow friends from "OV Gleichen"
At 2:00pm, all antennas were set up and we started to install the
transceivers and transverters.
We thought we could run in trouble with the WLAN this time because of
the construction site and the fog, but the network runned smoothly over
the whole contest.
At 4:00pm everything was set up and running, so we could start into our
last Contest in 2007. Unfortunately, some crew members had health
problems and couldn't take part so we were quite short on operators.
Higher bands (24GHz and up) were nearly impossible on Saturday because
of the really dense haze in the whole area.
On Sunday morning we had a beautiful sunrise. One could watch the fog in
the valleys of the Thuringian Forest with a clear blue sky above and the
high bands could make their QSOs.
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