Two weeks ago, the 31st of October marked the renaissance of a little tradition of our club: sending Feld Hell from Hell on Halloween! Our callsign-neighbor PC1K from the Netherlands pitched the idea to try “Hell-oween” again and to improve the turnout from last year, where we sadly didn’t get a Hell-mode QSO.
Our group started with LB3BK boarding the train at Marienborg all alone, and gained more and more members with each further station. The train became quite cramped, with lots of people traveling to the nearby airport, but luckily our equipment didn’t take up too much space. The six of us finally arrived in Hell, but we wouldn’t be quite complete without LB5DH, who would take a later train to join us after sundown.
Just one day before our trip to Hell, we swiftly registered the nearby Hell Beach as a POTA-Park (NO-1666). The idea was to set camp there and do a POTA-activation on the side. We even brought a tent just in case we might need it. The weather was pretty cooperative and we ended up leaving the tent in the bag, although we have to say: Hell is a lot colder than one would expect.
When the daylight began to fade, we quickly began setting up our 40m dipole by a bench on the landspit. It didn’t take long until we had to make use of our head- and flashlights to actually see what we are doing.
With the 40m dipole standing tall at last, we were finally joined by LB5DH, who helped with putting up the 60m dipole on arrival. Our setup spanned far enough that we had to use our handheld radios to communicate with eachother.
LB1HH brought his soundcard from last year, while LB0CJ pulled out his Kenwood TS-440S and set up the fldigi interface so that we could try our hand at sending Hell. As one of the first digital modes, Hellschreiber is no longer as popular, and this was also the case this evening. We saw PC1K calling CQ on our interface, but weren’t able to reach him. Fortunately DF1CN, a friend of DB4STI from Germany, knew about the activity and responded! As the germans say: die Welt ist wirklich ein Dorf.
But there we go, our first two-way Hell-QSO! We weren’t deterred by the poor conditions and kept trying for more contacts for a total of 2 hours, but sadly wouldn’t get any more. The temperature was dropping further, and to keep up the good spirits, LB4MK treated us with some heavenly pumpkin risotto he cooked earlier, perfect for the occasion! This little stamina boost definitely helped us endure longer in the icy cold.
On the other side of the bench, we also had our setup for standard-SSB. It dawned on us that sitting in the cold and hoping for one more Hell-QSO was not going to be too much fun, and we checked for the next scheduled train back to Trondheim. Great, still enough time to do the POTA activation! While one half sat by the portable station and started calling CQ on 40m, the other half started taking down the 60m dipole, as we wouldn’t need it any longer.
After a somewhat slow start, our POTA activation really got up to speed, and we fully activated Hell Beach! On the horizon, LB1HH spotted weak northern lights, the perfect little charm to our hellish adventure. And also a fitting suspect for some of the poor conditions, as polar lights are known to scatter and absorb radio signals in the ionosphere.
This year, we were 7 radio operators! And got one QSO in Hell-mode! Which is a definite improvement in our book. And on top of that, we got to activate the POTA-Park with 25 QSO’s. It was well worth it to go to hell and back for these results. Let’s continue this tradition and see how it will turn out next year!
