SOTA European Tour 2019 Day 6

Today was Monday June 24th and time to leave the nice hotel we had stayed in for the last 4 nights and start our slow journey back towards Calais. We still had four days of SOTA left to activate so not the end by far.

Our first summit of the day was:
 DM/BW-853 Blankenhalde. (10 point summit 871 M).
Latitude: 48.0417, Longitude: 8.9954

The journey to this summit from our last hotel was amazing, the country side around this area is breath taking. We stopped many times to admire the scenery and take photo's of the area. As we arrived at the summit it was occupied by DL/HB9DBM/P (Mark) and his XYL. We had a quick chat and he said we had just missed ON7DQ (Luc) who had finished his activation 20 minutes earlier.
We moved onto the other side of the road and a little closer to the trig point and set up.

As I was getting my gear from the back of the car I heard Michelle scream? "what is wrong" I shouted as I ran to her. She had been shocked by a fully grown female deer that had jumped out of the woods only a few feet away from her, then ran away probably from Michelle's scream hi hi
 (poor deer).

I only managed 4 QSO's on this summit but it was qualified and that's what counts. As we had two more summits and a lot of driving today we packed up and set off to our next summit.



Second summit of the day.

DM/BW-195 Zundelberg. (10 point summit 954 M).

Latitude: 48.0547, Longitude: 8.7417

Our next summit was a 20 minute walk from the car park location of  48 052153, 8 733299 Michelle said its too warm and she stayed in the car. I should have driven further up towards the summit as the roads/tracks are not too bad. It was very hot as the temperatures were close to 35 Deg's. I took plenty of water with me and I need it.

I had to look at my map quite a few times to make sure I was on the correct track. I managed to get as close as I could to the summit and then set up my linked dipole and decided on 40M. My second QSO  was a S2S with S57MS/P (Marko) on S5/KS-025. I had 9 QSO's in all and then decided to pack up and make my way back to Michelle as by the time I got back had been alone for just over an hour. She was happy just sitting on a deck chair knitting.

On to our last summit of the day:
DM/BW-156 Lindenberg. (10 point summit 949 M).
Latitude: 47.9922, Longitude: 8.67

This is another drive on summit just north of the village of Ippingen, we drove up the forestry tracks and did take a wrong turning as Michelle's map reading needs to improve.
We parked in the woods and decided to operate just on the edge of the fields.

Michelle had finished her second knitted jacket she had been working on so she was very happy. I set up the linked dipole and had seen there was a S2S to have with LB4FH/P (Bob) on LA/MR-155 so I went straight to 14.285 Mhz and there he was, a S2S logged so I decided to stay on 20M for a short while and managed 3 more QSO's. Then I tried my luck on 40 M and managed another 16 QSO's including two more S2S's with DL/HB9DBM/P (Mark) on DM/BW-361 whom we had met earlier on in the day and F5LKW/P (Roger) on F/CR-142.