WWFF: OH1NOA/P OHFF-0330 Yyteri Beach protected area 18.9.2018
My second activation was to another OHFF-reference close to my QTH. It is only 10 minutes drive from my radio QTH. Yyteri Beach and its dunes are most likely the most famous beach in Finland. It is extremely popular among the sunbathers during the summer and it has also other interesting history. Eg. The Rolling Stones played there in 1965. Nowadays the large path of it is protected by EU’s Natura2000-programme. The Sand beach shore is one of the most interesting places for birdwatching in Finland (like my first OHFF-0040).
Map of the site
I arrived to Yyteri just before 07z. There is a car park area near the dunes so reaching the actual OHFF-0330 is easy. It is possible to operate just some 50 meters from the car park at the top of the highest dune, Keisarinpankki (“Ceasar’s Bank”) but I decided to carry my equipment closer to the sea. I chose the place where there was only one dune between me and sea. Funny thing is that this is the nudist part of the beach. Of course in late September with +13C, wind and a bit of rain, we were alone there.
The operator Timo OH1NOA
The station went up quickly and I started on 7024 kHz CW. Unfortunately I had some problems with my Bencher keyer. Probably wind blew some sand and made contacts a bit unstable. I needed to clean it several times during the operation when the keyer started to send extra dahs. After 25 minutes and 43 qs and moved to SSB. Not much there, so I went to 10 MHz. When I changed the band from the antenna, I noticed that another half of my dipole was in the “30m position” (ie. shorter). So no wonder that my signal was maybe not as strong as expected. 10 MHz propagation was nice, I even got OH7MFO and OH3GZ which are normally difficult even on 40m because of the short skip. After the first hour at 0815z I had 81 qsos. 10 MHz is very good band for WWFF, hopefully more stations could be QRV there. Then I tried some 20m CW and SSB but they produced only 9 qsos so I returned to 40m SSB. There I got nice short pileup, lots of SPs. SM5CNQ from the other side of the bay was real S9. The final 10 minutes I spent on 40m CW for few more extra qsos. Last 45 minutes produced 41 qsos so my QSO total was 122 qsos.
The set-up
Dunes
Nudist beach
