OH0W_05

Our main team (oh3fm, oh3lqk, oh3mep and oh3mfp and Pekka) started our journey from Tampere to Kumlinge on Wednesday morning with two vans full of equipment. The rest of our gang (oh3rf, oh3gbs and oh3xr) were scheduled to arrive on Friday morning.

A trip to Kumlinge takes almost a full day. First we had to drive about 240 kms including crossing one channel with a cable ferry. After half an hour sailing with a ferry and we arrived to Brändö, the easternmost part of Aland Islands. After driving 20 kms to the southern edge of island we had to wait for the second ferry which took us to Kumlinge a couple hours later. One more leg of driving and we arrived to the rental cottage which we had chosen to be our QTH. The sun was already going down, but we started to build first antennas in the darkening evening and cold wind. Some of our team had already checked the place earlier and found it suitable for this operation. There is enough room for several antennas, including some hill for upper bands and seaside land for verticals for low bands.

On Thursday the weather was even worse, wind was up to 23m/s and it was raining. The bad weather made some planned antenna construction impossible and we were only able to build 2 el 20m quad and 15m 3 el yagi but didn't even try to raise them from the rock. It took half a day to install the 40m 4 sqr in rain with temperature just a few degrees above zero. When we finally went in to check it, we noticed that it was not tuned at all. Rest of the day we just tried to keep warm and checked equipment inside the cottage and installed PC´s and networks etc. Murphy strikes again, as we connected oh3lqk´s ic-746 to amplifier we found that Icom´s amplifier relay was defective. So now we had one radio less.

On Friday morning while we started to raise 20m quad, we saw three tired guys arriving. They had been driving all night, but they were still anxious to start antenna work. Wind was settling down but rocks were very slippery. The 80m vertical went up quickly and we also re-tuned the 40m 4sqr array.

All looked just good for the contest with just a few minor problems. Pete oh3mep had just almost everything in his boxes and we were able to build some new interface cables for changed the rig configuration. Friday evening we warmed up the sauna and continued testing the set-up.

0000Z Contest starts, still some configuration problems but we are in the game now. Oh3fm is on running station.

0100Z This is not going well, we are not able to run as planned so it's time to make a new plan. Instead of running "serious" multi-single we woke Alpo oh3mfp and encouraged him to operate as oh0mfp with his Alinco in sosb40 category. Others would run multi-one in "fun-mode".

0200Z Problems with PK232... problems with n1mm configuration, maybe we just should have learned this program a bit earlier? But 4am in the contest is a good time to open the manual for the first time!!!

0400Z N1mm with mmtty is not working well so we make ts850 + pk232 our running station.

0600Z Yeah! Soundcard interface definitely needs an audio cable from rig to laptop's mic input.... mmtty now working like a dream!

0700Z High swr on 40m, problem with coax stub, repaired.

0800Z The rest of gang is waking up. 15m beam is up now.

1000Z The visiting team left back home and the first team was continuing.

During the day we lost the pk232 on the monitoring station. It just stopped communicating with laptop. Since that we only had one operational station for our OH0W effort.

We tried to stay on 15m as long as possible since the band was well open. Too bad because we lost the 20m quad in storm during next night. Most part of the night there was oh3fm operating on 80m since it seemed be the best band.

In the afternoon temperature fell below zero and it started to snow.

On Sunday morning we replaced the quad with a dipole. Later we found that there was a bad connection in the feed point of the dipole and we made a vertical wire system instead. It was performing quite well even it wasn't perfectly matched.

During Sunday there is not much to mention, it was mostly oh3fm running on 15m while others were outdoor repairing the antennas. At least it was not raining anymore but it was still windy. No more damages with the equipment.

When the contest ended we had some 1400 qsos. Alpo oh0mfp had almost 400 qsos in his 40m log.

On Monday we dismantled everything except the wire vertical for 20m and r7000. Oh3fm and oh3lqk run some pileup on 40m to 20m cw.

On Tuesday we packed everything and started our way back to home. We arrived in Tampere at 9 o'clock in the evening.