I was in Mainz, Germany for a quick five day business trip with a very dense schedule. Nevertheless, I was hoping to activate at least one SOTA summit and was scanning through my options on Mario’s Adventureradio.de website. DM/RP-475 or Lerchenberg seemed to be the best option for the limited amount of time available to me. The summit is only approx. 7 miles (~11 km) from the Hotel I was staying at. I only brought along my HT (Yaesu VX-7R) to minimize luggage and was hopeful to be able to activate the summit on 2 meters – due to it’s proximity to a larger city.

A big THANK YOU for all the help goes to

• DL9MDI – Fred (repeat offender, Fred assisted also my OE activations)
• DL4FDM – Fritz
• DF2PI – Bert
• DF5WA – Bert (joined me on the activation)

I hope I did not mistakenly omit anyone on my list.

The summit is not much to speak of (no offense). The “peak’ is just 258m (846 ft) above mean sea-level – about the elevation gain on my daily dog-walk :) .

DM-RP-475 is within the state of Rhineland-Palatinate and close to the City of Mainz and Frankfurt, a very densely populated area of Germany. The region is fairly flat,  specifically compared to Colorado. My plane landed at 10:30 AM, right on time and I was in my Hotel by noon. My first phone call went out to Bert (DF5WA) soon after, and he picked me up a few minutes later. Bert is a very active SOTA chaser and with more than 42000 points well in the top 10 of all chasers – very impressive!

He  gave me a quick tour of Mainz, which was founded by the Romans in the late first century BC and is  the home town of Johannes Gutenberg  (~1440) who developed the first printing press. Large parts of the town got destroyed in WWII, but there is still a beautifully restored medieval down-town with old houses, churches, city-walls and towers – definitively worth a visit.

The Summit:

View Larger Map

As you can see on the terrain-map above, the summit is very flat. Finding the highest point is therefore not easy but luckily I had a native guide. The summit consists of mostly farm-land with narrow dirt roads for tractors and other farming equipment running between the fields. Since it was winter, the fields were all barren and wet due to the recent rain. It was a cold, overcast day, making me regret not having gloves and long underwear. Soon after finding a suitable spot for Bert’s antenna, he was on the air in no time on 40m CW. After verifying the local frequencies, I started calling CQ on my HT on 2m, hoping for a quick activation. But no such luck… after 15 minutes of constant calling I had nothing to show for and went back to Bert to verify the frequency. Since each OV (Ortsverein [Regional radio club]) has different calling frequencies I tried my luck on

an other QRG recommended by Bert. To make a long story short, I was only able to get one single QSO (DK8IJ) until Bert drummed up some local support via phone. Even then, my  signal reports were quite bad and it took several attempts (in most cases) to complete a QSO. So what was to blame for the poor performance? Well, hard to say but I guess it was a combination of several factors. For one, the topography of the summit combined with my rubber-ducky 5W HT did not make for an ideall combination. The fact that the FSV Mainz (the local soccer club) was playing in the nearby Coface arena (just a stone’s throw away) was not conducive for having a lot of local contacts either. The arena holds over 30000 people and soccer is VERY popular in Germany, leading me believe that a large percentage of local HAMs were either in the arena or glued to the TV following their local club and not listening to a weak signal on 2m.

What ever the reasons, I consider it another successful activation in a new (to me) association.  Neither the summit nor the outdoor experience was memorable but the warm welcome, help and assistance provided by local  amateurs, specifically by Bert will last. I hope I can return the favor at some point in the future. To wrap up the activation, I was invited to a coffee and a tour of Bert’s shack – thanks again Bert.

In case you are wondering, FSV Mainz won the game 3:1 against SC Freiburg :)

Some video impressions:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eFUlKINZEI

If you would like to leave questions or comments, please do so through Youtube.

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!! WARNING !! There are old mountaineers, and bold mountaineers... there are no old-bold mountaineers. Hiking and mountain climbing are potentially hazardous activities particularly in Colorado with its extreme elevations. I am not accepting responsibility for any death or injury resulting from activations based on my trip reports. Proper training, experience, and personal capability assessment is required - enjoy!