5 SOTA activations and first real DX!

It seems it wasn`t enough that we have done amazing 5 summits today – the first real DX contacts from SOTA summits came into the log! WX was fantastic but we were in a little hurry because of the closing-time of the cablecars…So we had to break down our “shack” on the summits quite fast after having enough contacts for a valid activation. We needed to catch a few cablecars after our last summit – it was very close but we also managed to get the last one which took us up to the slope down home.
Of course the cablecars do not take you up to the very top of the summits – so we didn`t break rules 😉

The most amazing thing(s) today were 2 QSOs:

• with N4EX Richard in North Carolina from OE/SB-189 Hochalmspitze @ 10W from the KX3 into the Buddipole Dipole Antenna on the 20m band, and
• with W4ZV William in North Carolina from OE/SB-321 Hohe Penhab @ same power and band.
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Both were about 7.500 km away from us. It was a bit hard to transfer reports but a very friendly station from Great Britain helped a little and as the conditions came up we could hear each other at about 44.
For me that`s very impressive and I`m sure now that my TRX/antenna combination for SOTA works very well. By the way – I used my very simple iphone-headset for the first time today and got very good reports!

Special thanks go to all regular customers on all our SOTA activations!

We took 15 lifts today, skied down 25 kilometers and got abt. 6.000 vertical meters at the end of the day.
Tomorrow I`m going to activate two more summits in the morning and again together with OE2SNL 3 more summits in the afternoon. Then we have been to all summits in our ski-area this season. On Wednesday -if WX allows- I will walk abt. 15 km on my snowshoes and do another 3 summits…

CU!
Tom, OE2ATN (phonie)
Franz, OE2SNL (cw)