52.2793 N, 5.6696 E
Already it had been a while since the last activation. I got myself a vertical whip antenna of about 5.50m from Ali (for about € 25) and it has been working great. I had a chance to test it out at the seashore last week and got across the pond with no issues whatsoever. The only issue was getting the SWR anywhere right, which was solved by using the G90s tuner instead of fixing the antenna.
Considering the great weather, me and the YL set up on a bench quite near the parking with the whip in a few short minutes. It was already pretty late in the day so not much POTA activity at the time and I couldn’t hear the German, Polish that were supposed to be up. Not much left but claiming my own frequency and I did!
After calling Is this frequency in use a number of times and listening for a few minutes while getting the mic ready, I settled for 14325 but during the third QSO someone started talking Spanish over me and I moved up a few (kilo-)Hertzes to 14333 and ran about 25 SSB QSOs in half an hour.
CW #
The park started emptying and things were getting quiet and I didn’t want to talk much more, so I figured I could try for a few CW contacts.. I saw PA4PA set up on 15m, couldn’t hear him, but set up a little away and called CQ. I still can’t keep up - I got a call from PA4PA, a Russian callsign that I think I got wrong (UA3WBC), and IK8HCM.
All callers were really patient and I think they keyed their callsign 10 times before I convinced them that I got it correctly. CW is just so stressful when you’re not very fluent. I can do 15 wpm while practicing no problem, but then add in QSB, noise and key clicks and suddenly missing a letter at 12ish wpm is distracting enough to completely lose track.
