SOTA European Tour 2019 Day 9

Our final day of the tour, back into Belgium and the route home.

We had planed two summits for the last day but added this one as it was on the way.

ON/ON-004, Bois de Hazeille. (6 point summit 586 M).

Latitude: 50.0328, Longitude: 5.4267

This summit is right by an old disused air field, the small forest around the air strip is out of bounds as instructed by ON7DQ (Luc), so we operated on the track.

The route from Luxembourg took us through Bastogne and as this year is the 75th Anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge there were plenty of sights to look at.

After a short stop in Bastogne we headed to the summit. The turning near the monastery is at 50.024921, 5.406010 from here just follow the track until the T junction and turn left and follow this until you are near the second tower. All directions from Luc and they worked really well thank you.

I set up my dipole spotted myself and started on 20M, only two QSO's so I tried my luck on 40M and managed a further 11 QSO's, including two S2S's with DL/G1INK/P (Steve) on DM/BW-321 & GW4TQE/P (John) on GW/NW-054. my last was the legend himself ON7DQ (Luc).

On we move to summit two of the last day.

ON/ON-006, La Croix Scaille. (6 point summit 503 M).

Latitude: 49.9511, Longitude: 4.8447

This summit is only 100 M from the French boarder, the weather was fantastic, temperature was around 35 degree's and not too many visitors at the very large unusual tower. We decided to set up on the car park as there was only one other car there.

We decided to have lunch before I started calling CQ, a few nice fresh rolls and cup of coffee. It was a great pick nick hi hi.
I was ready to start calling CQ now so I decided to try 40M again as it was the best band on my last summit. I managed 8 QSO's including two S2S's again, this time OK2PDT/P (Jan) on OK/JC-010 & G4ZAO/P (David) on G/TW-001 on CW.
After just over 30 minutes we decided to call it an end and head towards our last summit.

Last summit of the Tour.
ON/ON-021, Plantis de Mesnil. (2 point summit 306 M).
Latitude: 50.1783, Longitude: 4.9148

This summit was about a 40 minute drive from our last summit and the time went by very fast. The air con was on full as I think it was 38 degrees outside. We parked up just in the small forest about 10 meters from the road side.

Just a short 5 minute walk into the woods and there is a small wooden shelter, we set up on the track just outside this. Again I opted for 40M, I just had a quick check on SOTAWatch3 and saw that DL/G1INK/P (Steve) was on DM/BW-256. I gave him a call and managed my first S2S with him from this location. I also had a S2S with DL3SBA/P (Lutz) who I had met on our first summit near Friedrichshafen. This followed with a S2S with SV2RUJ/P (Stavros) on SV/TL-002 and my final QSO of the tour was yet another S2S with DL/G1INK/P (Steve) again who had  managed to get to his second summit.
This was the end and Michelle asked if there were any more summits near that we could do Hi Hi I think she is hooked.

A big thank you to all of my chasers for making this Tour a great successes. I hope to do this again next year.