It was one beautiful sunny and warm autumn Sunday. It took me 1,5 hrs to reach the top of summit. The summit is overgrown with trees. I made couple 2m contacts from there. Then I moved to nearby meadow where I made the HF activation on 20m band. I was very surprised when ZL station called me back. I used dipole antenna and about 50W of power. The antenna was only 2m above the ground near the tree.
This is the top of summit:
I reached the top of the summit after 1,5 hours. I used a shortcut off the hiking trail. This summit is often used by paragliders for takeoffs and there about 15 people when I came. So I decided to move little bit away from that area. I found nice high stand for hunters in a meadow. It was empty so I used it as my hamshack for about 1 hour. I used 20m dipole and made some contacts:
Since I had tuner with me I was able to tune 20m dipole on 17m. I did not bring 17m dipole with me. I checked 17m band but did not hear not a single station. It seemed like completely closed. But I called some CQs and spotted myself. Then I made nice DX contact with K4DY in the North Carolina. Wow! My power was 30W the whole time. While I was packing the HF equipment I heard from handheld SP9KUC calling CQ SOTA on 2m. So I changed the antenna to telescopic and called him back. Our QSO distance was pretty nice 117 km.
Saturday was rainy. On Sunday I was wondering whether I go portable. The weather was still not very good. But at noon I decided to go and activate some nearby summit. It is only half hour drive from by base location and about hour and half hour hike to mountaintop. It is located on "Slovensky kras" National Park. There are many caves in this mountain range. There are many undiscovered for sure. One part of the trail leads you through rocks in steep climb near steep slopes. You have to be careful there. As the summit has no views, here is at least one photo above steep part of trail.
It was relatively short but quite steep hike to the summit. No tourists met. This is quite remote area. Even only a few mostly old people are living in a village down in the valley. The pity was that there are no views from the summit because of trees in all directions. But there is nice view of the valley from the saddle. I made only 5 contacs on 20m. No more replies copied after more CQ calls. The antenna was only 2-3m above the ground. Dipole legs were stretched over tree branches.
Zlatý stôl (1322 m asl) is the highest peak of Volovske mountains located in east Slovakia. It took me two and half hours to the summit and exactly one hour back to the car.
I made 3 contacts on 145 MHz FM and 5 on 20m.
This was SOTA activation on 2 band. Maybe one of the last or the last "VHF only" activation. I made only 4 QSOs. I was trying really hard and calling many CQs on 145.500, 145.525, 145.550, 145.575. Only 4 stations answered. I used handheld transceiver Yaesu FT70 with 1/2 wave telescopic antenna Diamond RH-770.
The weather was perfect. No wind, pleasantly warm day and beautiful nature. Bears occur in this mountain range, but luckily I haven't met any. It took me almost three hours to the mountain top and one and half hour back to the car.
Another SOTA activation after half a year break. This time on HF 20m. I was not active in SOTA on HF for exactly two years. Shame on me. These days I'm trying to reduce the weight of my SOTA equipment to minimum. I would like to be more active in the SOTA program again and especially on HF.
