The story started with our visits to the radio camp in Döbriach on Lake Millstättersee. The idea was actually to get our son interested in radio engineering. But it infected me with the radio virus. I met a lot of new people there and was also part of some Sota activations. Having always enjoyed mountain hiking as a sport, I discovered Bergfunken about 5 years ago after getting my license, and we have already activated a few Sota peaks. Through my visits to the radio camp and the radio operation there, I got to know Upper Carinthia and also many local radio operators.
I have always been an enthusiastic skier and thanks to accommodation with my OM’s grandmother in Bad Gastein, these became our local mountains. We have been making the slopes in the ski area unsafe for some time now. We also taught the children to ski there. I first came into contact with radio because we equipped the children with PMR devices and helmet headsets and then let them ride alone in the ski area. That’s when I realized that the Mama radio was very practical and that you could safely lie down in the sun and still keep in good contact in the ski area. The children also had a lot of fun being constantly connected to each other and to mom, getting lost on the slopes and then meeting up again. The PMR devices also had enormous ranges in the valley.
After licensing, we switched to real amateur radios, but the range on the direct frequencies remained very limited due to the high mountains all around the valley. Fortunately, there are relay stations in really exposed locations with enormous ranges. My favorite relay is the Hochkönig with its wide catchment area, which works excellently throughout the entire ski area and is therefore very suitable as a ski connection relay. It’s really interesting when OMs in Bavaria or Upper Austria accompany me while skiing at the Hochkönigrelais and are happy about live snow and piste reports. While the Hochkönig goes extremely far to the north, it’s all fun to the south on the main Alpine ridge. After its new construction, the relay on Dachstein also has an enormous range and works more or less excellently throughout the Amade ski area and also in the Gastein Valley. While the Dachstein relay broadcasts to southern Carinthia, it also passes the main Alpine ridge to Upper Carinthia with the reception of the Dachstein.
I somehow have the feeling that the main Alpine ridge, with its previously difficult and dangerous Alpine crossings, represents a real mental barrier for the population and separates them into two worlds. In Gastein the end of one world ends in Böckstein or in Sportgastein in the Goldberg group and on the other side the world ends in Upper Carinthia in Mallnitz with the Ankogel ski area or in Flattach with the Mölltal Glacier. Whenever there was bad weather in Gastein, it was often recommended to get on the train and get out on the other side in bright sunshine and go skiing on the Ankogel or Mölltal Glacier. But this is not advertised there at all. If you climb a little higher from the mountain station, you immediately have an extremely good all-round view far into the Pongau and only notice how close the two worlds actually are. Sota activations on Schareck or Ankogel are real range monsters. So I was also able to spontaneously attend the radio club evenings there by driving through the ÖBB Tauern Tunnel to Spittal/Drau and enjoy the excellent food in the club restaurant.
At the moment the Tauern Tunnel, which was built under Emperor Franz Josef, is closed for more than half a year due to renovation work and now you can really see that the end of the valley without tunnel operation is the end of the world. To be honest, I’m already having a bit of withdrawal symptoms because I can no longer spontaneously visit my radio friends in Carinthia. And radio communication from the valley is difficult anyway. The Relais Goldeck on Lake Millstättersee and the Relais Gerlitzen on Lake Ossiachersee do not go over the main Alpine ridge, just as the Hockkönig or Dachstein do not come south. So what remains is the relay at Sonnblick, which, given its excellent location, would have what it takes to connect both worlds. After all, it is a Hamnet node from north to south. Unfortunately, the built-in Motorola relay can only communicate with DMR and not multimode FM. Although I do a lot of DMR QRV while hiking, I honestly can’t remember ever hearing a local DMR QSO on Sonnblick because it’s apparently difficult to get the average radio operator excited about DMR. There is simply no way around FM and so the Sonnblick remains stuck in a deep sleep. Apparently there used to be an FM connection to Goldeck in Carinthia and the entire Tauern route from Golling to southern Carinthia was easy to reach, but that was a long time ago and way before my time.
So, at the moment I’m at a loss as to how I can best keep in touch with Carinthia and if I could wish for something, it would be an expansion of the Dachstein or Hochkönig relay in order to spontaneously link it on demand to the Goldeck in Carinthia, then the connection of the two worlds would be easily possible.
In the meantime, all I have left is a discovery that I recently made while skiing in Sportgastein: If you move from the Goldbergbahn mountain station a few hundred meters past the webcam there into the unsecured free ski area south towards Hagener Hütte, then a radio path opens up, from which you can also visually see to the right past the Ankogel towards Obervellach and the Mölltal to the Drautal and the Goldeck relay with the handheld radio can work very well. Recently I drained almost an entire handheld radio battery from there. After a while it got a bit cold there at almost 2700m altitude and we then stopped the action. In any case, the OE8 radio operators were amazed that they could hear me so well from there on the direct 2m connection at Lake Millstättersee. So you can combine sparking and skiing excellently and if you could help with relay technology, then the main Alpine ridge would no longer be such a barrier. Does anyone have a good idea how this could be achieved?
Sabine OE5SLE