THE HAMRADIO DOT COM

During the Easter I will activate my new Estonian ham radio call ES1NOA. The plan is also to activate several Estonian WWFF (ESFF) references for the first time. I am currently Estonian WWFF manager. I will use about 70 watts and EFHW (41m long) and 40/30/20m link dipole as a reserve. Modes are CW&SSB. Bands available: 80/40/30/20/17/15/12/10m. Times are just rough estimations and references are subject to change. Weather forecast shows warm and sunny weather.

Friday 19th April

1430-1630 ESFF-0278 Paljassaare, call: ES1NOA/1

Saturday 20th April

0630-0830 ESFF-0283 Suurupi ES1NOA/2

1000-1200 ESFF-0287 Vääna MKA ES1NOA/2

1400-1600 ESFF-0160 Niitvälja ES1NOA/2

Sunday 21st April

0600-0800 ESFF-0198 Rahumäe ES1NOA/1

0930-1130 ESFF-0239 Vansi ES1NOA/2

1330-1530 ESFF-0195 Rabivere ES1NOA/3

Monday 22nd April

It is possible that I will activate some OHFF-reference on the way back to home (OH2 or OH3 district). Call: OH1NOA/p

Now when I write this, I have activated 26 Finnish WWFF-references. Equipment I am using “in the bushes” and having with me on the road is as follows:

• TS-2000E Radio + mic + Bencher-keyer (total about 9 kg). Now I have used 75 W out, perhaps will reduce power a bit more.
• 12V 26Ah VRLA-battery (about 7 kg), I have two of them (identical). Ideally I can operate from 2 references (3-3,5 hrs) with one battery. Cables.
• 41m End-Fed-antenna 80-10m
• SOTABeams 40/30/20m link dipole, I am able to tune it to 80 meters but it doesn’t work very well there. This acts like a reserve antenna. My EFHW stopped to tune last time! The dipole is also ideal in the place where I don’t have enough room for 41m wire.
• Fiberglass fishing pole 7 m – I need to buy another one. Fortunately these cost only 10-15 euros. I have also a set of guy ropes (2 ropes) for it. I attach my dipole from the feeding point just by using electric tape. It is very light antenna, so it is very easy and quick to erect but I need to lower the wires for band change. For EFHW I have one kind of shackle on top of pole, wire goes through it and guy ropes keep the mast still. So EFHW setup is like upside down letter V. For dipole I don’t need guy ropes as dipole itself has supporting wires.
• Mount for pole – I use fence post mount which is very handy especially if you have soft ground.
• Cable ties to attach EFHW matching unit to tree.
• Travel chair.
• Plastic box for random stuff + acting as a table for rig. I will have a light travel table soon.
• Light cheap plastic tarp for ground – it keeps operating area cleaner and dry.
• DD Hammock 3x3m tarp for rainy weather + Paracord for attaching, I also have one smaller tarp for quicker rain cover.
• Plastic IKEA chopping board where I write my log + logbooks (light notebooks) + pencils.
• Some tools like wire cutters and Mora knife, some electric tape and Gorilla tape (a must!).
• Thermos for coffee + random food and water
• two backbags for carrying

These are carried by two people. Total weight about 20 kgs. Usually I don’t have DD Hammock tarp with me if there is no rain. I also leave another battery to car.

I am slowly writing few words about my World Wide Flora Fauna trips. Last I wrote before this was one Ritajärven suojelualue OHFF-0279 in September. Same day, the 30th of September, I continued to Sovion metsä (The Sovio Forest). It is on the East side of Karkku village center, next to Jyränvuori (180m above the sea level hill). The area itself is also some 100-120m above the sea level with the nice takeoff to SouthWest to Lake Rautavesi. To reach the area, you need to turn from the road 2505 to the northernmost smaller road going to South. The road before it has the closed gate.

Jyränvuori has actually SOTA-reference, maybe somewhere in the future I will activate that one too – just to check the wiev. OHFF-0200 had nice old mixed forest, old spruces, pines, birches and lots of moss. At the end of the road there was quite nice area to park. Then I needed to “climb” 50-100 meters into the reference area. At the border there was a green protected area sign. QTH was very good and reference was rare too – only the 2nd activation, so pileups were good. My signal sounded loud even I had to set my station up to the small aread between the woods to the sloping ground. I made 182 qsos and 163 unique calls in less than 2 hours. It was my record after 9 references.

My next trip was to Karkku, which is a former Finnish county now a part of Sastamala county. We drove about one hour to Lake Ritajärvi protected area. This place is quite large and there are several options where to operate. We went to the parking place near Lake Alinen Ritajärvi (=lower Ritajärvi), from where a marked path to the lake started. Not an easy task with all my QRO equipment as it was about 600 meters walk. The place itself was nice, there was a fireplace, a building to arrange the meetings, a toilet and the wooden benches and tables. So I could build very comfortable place to operate. And I could set up the antenna also nicely just few meters from the lake. Before I started to operate Saku OH2NOS came to visit. Saku is the prominent Finnish WWFF-activator and he is not living too far from this place. We chatted a while and same time I build station up. There were also lots of other visitors in the site, this lake seems to be extremely popular among the hikers.

Operation went smoothly. This is the 2nd activation of this reference. Very good pile up in the start on 40m CW. I worked 36 qsos in 17 minutes before moving to 40m SSB which produced nice pileup as well. From here 20m SSB was also in a good shape. Perhaps the reason was that I started operation around 10Z, later than normally. Total qso count was 160 with 132 unique hunters. Operation time was 2 hours and 10 minutes.

OH2NOS filmed a short YouTube-video:

Next site was not too far from Lake Vuonajärvi. Direct path is less than 9 km but via road it is of course longer. Now my station was right in the middle of the forest. I also found that I lost my plug from CW paddle to Lake Vuonajärvi. Fortunately I had another one in my headphones, the negative side was that I needed to listen without headphones.

I noticed that my signal was weaker from here. I got lots of 559 reports when I started on 40m CW. But still it took only 26 minutes to reach 44 qsos. It was nice to work P2P-qso with OH2NOS/P who was from Koskeljärvi OHFF-0542. He was something like 35km from my place. I finished my operation after 1 hour and 24 minutes. So far my lowest qso count (but also the shortest time): 115 qsos but ok 111 unique hunters.

I uploaded few videos to YouTube:

New weekend and I planned to do double-double activation this weekend. Weather forecast was a bit unstable but at the end wx was quite ok during the daylight hours. OHFF-0244 Vuonajärven luonnonsuojelualue or in English Lake Vuonajärvi protected area was a new one for WWFF. This area is not far from Pinkjärvi OHFF-0237, just slightly more south and on the other side of E8-road. The protection area itself is few hundred meters from Lake Vuonajärvi and it was nice, calm pine forest with the rock base. We found a good place to park our car and I decided to set up the station on the rock to the few meters higher ground only maybe 50 meters from the parking point.

Again I started on 40m CW and the pileup was deep. I managed to work “the mandatory” 44 qsos in 21 minutes. From Vuonajärvi 40m SSB was also running very nicely – 42 qsos only in 19 minutes! So location was good although the lake itself wasn’t helping – it was in the SE direction. Added more contacts on 80, 30 and 20m and packed after 1 hour and 45 minutes. Logged totally 163 qsos and 143 hunters – exactly same amount of unique calls than from OHFF-0170.