DL3TU
- portable
Corsica Island - EU-014
Vacation in August/ September 2017
with
the family.
We stayed on a camp site in the beautiful Asco valley
near Ponte Leccia, JN42NL, for
a couple of days. A stealth end fed
dipole for 20m, 30m and 40m was placed among the trees and buhes. I was
QRV in the evening of August 26th, 27th
and
28th where mainly QSOs with EU were logged.
In the second week we moved to the east coast near
Cervione (arrow pointing left). The antenna was deployed in the
huge trees on
the camp site on the same day
we arrived. Unfortunately the local noise level was rather
high. Lots of cheap electronic devices all around the place caused
strong local QRM.
During the operation in the evening of August 30th, signals
simply
disappeared in
the noise when QSB set in.
After discussing the situation with the xyl, she agreed
on
two activations from the
beach. The first took place in the evenig of September 2nd. I intended to place the inverted L as close to the water as
possible. But setting up an
antenna without help turned out to be tricky. Finally
someone came walking
along the beach and offered me help.
Then two youngsters came to the spot. They had been attracted
by the antenna and wondered what it could be. "Are you a
fisherman?" they asked. We had an interesting discussion
about ham radio and why I wanted to operate from the beach.
Finally I got on the air but after just two QSOs the
antenna
collapsed. One of the tent pegs in the water had come loose due to the
high surf. Just in the same moment the xyl and my daughter arrived. With
their help the damage could be fixed quickly. I resumed operating and
as 30m was in good shape many QSOs went into the log, some
even from outside Europe (VU2GSM, ZL4AX).
The
night of Sept. 2nd was most remarkable. While we had clear sky, heavy
thunderstorms were building over
Italy. Watching the thunderbolts and the towering cumulunimbus
above Toscana was really impressive.
In the morning of
September 3rd, when
17m was supposed to be open towards the far east, I returned to the
beach with my equipment. The vertical dipole was placed at the water and
for the first time sun- protection was needed.
Condx were fairly good and again many EUs were calling.
Unfortunately the 10 Watts from my KX3 were not enough to be heard well in Asia. In total only
about ten stations from the far east could be worked.
When no more stations were calling, I quickly jumped into the water to cool down a bit. Then resumed CQ- ing ;-)
It
was lots of fun. Thanks for the QSOs!
The Log has been uploaded to Club Log and LoTW,
paper QSLs will be sent via the bureau.
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