2025-04-15

SOTA in neutral territory

On Easter Monday I used a short trip to Belgium as an excuse to activate ON/ON-026 (Le Mont d’Henri-Chapelle). Similar to my previous activation I had to fight against bad HF conditions. The ionosphere had been in a terrible state over the last few weeks, even leading to visible auroras in northern Germany, and today was no exception.

I brought my beloved Elecraft KX-2 with the bigger, higher voltage battery, so I could boost the total power to 12W instead of the regular 10W the KX-2 delivers with my smaller batteries. Joking aside, I even had my Yaesu FL-110 PA as a backup in case conditions got even worse than expected. In the end, I didn’t need the PA and I got a total of 5 QSOs in just over 30 minutes, one more than the 4 required to activate a summit. (2x EA, 2x OH, 1x YO).

While the summit triangulation point is right next to a busy road, you can walk to the end of a side road and find a perfect SOTA-compatible picnic table with a magnificent view of the rolling hills around you.

Back home I started to read up on the history of the place and the wider area. The towns and streets are full of history; leaving the town of Henri-Chapelle to the east towards Aachen, the main road is called Route Charlemagne, which of course refers to the great European emperor.

A few kilometres to the east lies the town of Moresnet, which is an extremely interesting and enigmatic piece of European history. The name of the small town refers to the Beglian-Prussian condominium called Neutral Moresnet, which existed from 1816 to 1921 and, as the name suggests, had a neutral legal status during this significant period of European history. Despite its neutrality, the people of this town were torn between the nations and the wars between them. The city’s (historical) wealth came from its zinc deposits, which were exploited until the end of World War II.

It took me one sitting to read David Van’s (admittedly short) excellent essay [Zink] (https://www.suhrkamp.de/buch/david-van-reybrouck-zink-t-9783518072905), which tells the story of this state and its people, torn between war and peace and borders. Despite this, Moresnet also had (and still has) a vibrant Esperanto-speaking community, which in itself is a measure of how multinational this place is to this day.

I guess it’s not just SOTA and ham radio. It’s at least as much about the places you discover along the way.