Swiss Remote DX Amateur Radio Station at 1'660m

DXCC-Status 11. April 2025
DXCC-Mixed 305 // DXCC-Challenge 2473 // DXCC-SAT 161 >>> all achieved since 6.3.2016 in only 9 years

August 2024: 5 years remote DX station anniversary

Artikel über unsere Remote DX-Station Rigi Scheidegg in CQ-DL 7/2024 [5’805 KB]
Artikel über unsere Remote DX-Station Rigi Scheidegg in HBRadio 2/2023 [492 KB]
Vortrag "Jagd nach DXCC Punkten - 2024" [25’296 KB] 21. Juni 2024 bei der Sektion HB9LU in Luzern

Flexradio 6700 High End SDR Transceiver with 8 VFO's with SmartSDR v3.7.3
OptiBeam OB5-6 for 6m
OptiBeam OB9-5 extra heavy duty beam for 10m, 12m, 15m, 17m, and 20m
54m Wire-Antenna with JC-4s Stockcorner Tuner for 30m to 160m and 1kW
Expert 1.3k Amplifier as Antenna-Switch and Tuner
Prosistel PST61D Rotator
Genius Rotator solution with magnetic Azimuth sensor from 4O3A
Airspy HF + with Spyserver powered by a Raspberry Pi4
NPort 5410 serial port Mulitplexer for remote control of the Expert 1.3k amplifier
Winradio G33DDC Excalibur Pro professional SDR-Receiver with Wellbrook Loop ALA1530LN
RadarScape FlightRadar Receiver
Gas Lightning Protection from Huber+Suhner with three Coax-Relays
Remote 230V Power ON/OFF for 8 devices
Remote 8-port Web-Relais to Switch ON/OFF our HAM-Devices
Home-Made Stockcorner JC-4s Tuner-Protection Box
WEB Temperature Monitor-Device with 4 temp. sensors in the cabinet
1:1 5kW Choke from Balun Desings
SoftEther VPN-Server on a Raspberry Pi3 to avoid SmartLink Outages
Node Red Dashboard running on a Raspberry Pi4 (4GB)
Lenovo ThinkPad L580N Notebook with Windows 11 for local maintenance of our devices
150 watt cabinet-heater for the winter season
Main 13.8V / 40A Power-Supply PSU-1250
Main 5V / 7A Traco Power-Supply for all Raspberry Pi's
Hercules Starlight DJ-Controller for SmartSDR to control the remote Flex-6700
Software from DM5XX for the Hercules DJ-Controller

Dashboard Overview/Function:
More Details [2’710 KB] about our Node Red Dashboard
Node Red Introduction [11’443 KB] from Kyle AA0Z

- Rotor Control for Genius Rotator with magnetic sensor (4O3A)
- KM-Tronic temperature device with 4 sensors in our RIG-Cabinet
- Live local weather station at Rigi Scheidegg
- Live weather from Rigi Scheidegg openweathermap.org
- Solar and DR2W Propagtion Information
- Band Activity from DX-Heat.com and DX-Spots from My Summit
- KM-Tronic 8-Port Relay Board
- Detail Weather Diagrams from openweathermap.org
- Raspberry Pi4 (4 GB) System Information
- Lightning warning with Audio Notification (<25km)

The sensor uses a magnetic compass that reads azimuth. This insures you will never have problems with pulse, pot meter sensors, broken indicators or innacurate readings.

- Accuracy within 1 degree
- No need for initial calibration
- User programmable true north and magnetic north correction
- The sensor can now be used independently from the motor control unit
- Windows application, Android App, and integrated into the SmartSDR App for iOS and MAC

Genius Rotator Solution from 4O3A

By the end of April heavy winter is usually more of less over in Switzerland and spring settles in, even on Mount Rigi. Wolfgang and myself were relieved because our OptiBeam OB9-5 xhd had survived its second winter unscathed. Little did we know then: April 22nd to April 25th brought 4 days of continuous snow fall on Mount Rigi. There was more snow during these 4 days than during the entire rest of the winter! And exactly during these 4 days neither Wolfgang nor myself ever turned the antenna because I was enjoying a few warm days south of the alps in Ticino with my family and Wolfgang was on a cruise. This led to one-sided snow accumulation on the antenna - not good, but see for yourself in the 2 minute video above.

Tom, the owner of OptiBeam could hardly believe what he saw when we sent him the picture of the bent element plate. He never had such an incident with several thousand(!) antennas installed and operational. He quickly sent us an element plate of a much larger antenna that was modified for the OB9-5 boom. Luckily the mobile crane became available on short notice and I could install two plates for both large xhd elements with the help of the crane operator Hugo.

I took the opportunity to install the new magnetic sensor for our Rotator Genius controller that we got from 4O3A at the HamRadio show in Friedrichshafen (see previous post). The original sensor lost connection when we transmitted even low power on 15m. After a few months it totally failed. I installed 8 ferrites on the cable close to the sensor. It works and it does not fail even when transmitting QRO on 15m now.

Below some audio examples: 20m in SSB, from SDR receiver K3FEF in Milford, Pennsylvania, USA with a G5RV antenna. Distance: 6366.42 km (3979.012 miles) and from Brasil on 10m.

Bad news:
Our great OptiBeam OBDYA12-5 suffered a broken boom due to very heavy ice/snow load combined with high wind speeds (2. Feb. 2022). It looks like no regular antenna design can survive the exteme WX conditions that we encounter on Mount Rigi. However, the 6m 5 element OptiBeam ist still doing fine and the 54m longwire although torn apart by the broken antenna was an easy fix and works OK. The OBDYA12-5 was a fantastic antenna and we already miss it a lot. We hope Tom from OptiBeam will be able to create an antenna for us with a much stronger boom that has a chance to suvive these storms, although we are very much aware that this will not be easy. Sadly below you can find the "final pictures - RIP" from our OBDYA12-5.