An old tradition that may as well be built on wordplay and puns alone, LA1K/P went straight to Hell a few weeks back (by train). Hellschreiber in Hell, on Halloween, hasn’t been carried out for a while now, so LB0CJ, LB1HH and LB5PI thought they should give it a go and venture out on a special kind of trick or treating this fall evening.
LB1HH jumped on the packed train at Leangen and had to stand the entire ride hehe!
– Original map by Truls Lange Civitas, edits by LB5PI
Hellschreiber isn’t the most popular digi-mode, even for how old it is. But, it has it’s fair share of fans. Besides, it has a very cool name, and a Geiger-counter sounding signal, who doesn’t love that? For this retro-occasion, we thought it would be cool to use an older type of radio for the trip. LB0CJ had recently bought a Kenwood TS-440S used on the finn.no marketplace, which paired nicely with LB1HH’s analogue Yamaha Steinberg sound card. Along with LB5PI’s ancient Lenovo Thinkpad, the setup was complete!
– Photo by LB5PI
When we arrived at Hell Station, the rain had started pouring down a bit so the piece of grass we expected to place our antenna was abandoned. There was a little shelter at the platform, but it was already occupied. Further down the platform however was the old station hall waiting room (and a boarded up ticket window). This was empty for the time being so we set up our shack indoors occupying a bench or two.
The problem however was that the outdoor area was a parking lot and not completely suited for our vertical 40m antenna and 16 radials. There was a tiny patch of grass at the corner of the station building however that just had to do. Along our equipment we had brought over 20m length of coax cables, but only a max length of 10m each and no joint connector to expand them. Utilising every centimeter of the coax to the full extent, we finally got the antenna up, fastening the guy-lines to the surrounding nature of an electric car charger, a garbage shed and even one in the grass too.
If that car was done charging, our antenna and equipment would be toast!
– Photo by LB5PI
For our digital interface we used Fldigi. It seems to be the most definitive digi-mode program, even though many members seem to find the UI very confusing to use! Perhaps we should arrange more digital portable trips to properly learn it. After some tinkering with the dials on both the radio and sound card, everything seemed functional and we were set to have some QSOs!
We forgot to capture a photo ourselves so this is from the desk of PC1K!
We called CQs patiently for a while to no luck. After a while we gave up and tried spotting ourselves on DXsummit.fi and calling on the VHF-repeater to see if anyone in the region wanted to have a go. Such planned and desperate outreach is usually called “Tantekjøring” (literally “Aunt’s driving”. If there’s an international term, please let us know!) After a while we checked out Hamspots.net which has a rather active Hellschreiber forum and spotting board. A very friendly PC1K even replied to our email when he wasn’t even active on the radio, but unfortunately he wasn’t able to hear us either.
– Photo by LB5PI
After trying some more we figured out there were only 4 people running Feld Hell on 40m this evening; us at LA1K/P, DH8WG, F4ELU/QRP and PC1K, which joined after our request. We were able to hear DH8WG, albeit rather poorly, and DH8WG and PC1K eventually got a QSO of their own. The only person that seemed to hear us was F4ELU/QRP, spotting us on DXsummit.fi very early. At least it was nice knowing our equipment worked properly.
– Screenshot from DXsummit.fi
Improvements for next time may have to be to try a different band. The daylight situation would be better if the 31st landed on a day off work, but occasionally the conditions on the 20m band can last some time after the sun has set as well. Other than that we may have a suspicion the southern hills may have interfered with the reach of our signal, or we may have been unlucky with the skip of the transmission. It would be better to set up camp far up the hills of course, but our warm QTH with heating and toilets is hard to beat a rainy fall day.
Compared here to Hell Station, and Værnes Airport which are rather flat.
– Maps from Hoydedata.no
Even though 3 skilled radio operators couldn’t get a single QSO, we still had a great time, as LB1HH went to the store and bought some snacks! But, sometimes you go out on a trip and it’s just a big bust, those trips usually never make it to this blog. However, maybe next year some more people will catch up on the Halloween-Hell “tradition”, and QSOs will just pour in.
Featured image details:
Haunted station, very scary!
– Photo by LB5PI
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