Radio Club Split 9A1AKL (9A2A)
has organised the second expedition to Palagruza Island (IOTA EU090)
in order to take part in this years IOTA contest. This remote group
is situated roughly 42 deg 5 min NORTH and 16 deg 5 min EAST , grid
loc. JN82DJ. Members of the expedition were: 9A4NA,9A3NU,9A3LO and
myself, 9A4SP. Just like two years ago,we have operated from the
lighthouse 'Palagruz', built in 1875 , on the largest island of
the group Vela Palagruza. This location is the highest peak of the
island group , about 90 meters high , and the rest of the island
as well as the other two islands (Mala Palagruza and Galijula) and
all the rocks are clearly visible from there.
We have arrived
to the island on 24jul98 in the afternoon , and have started to
transport the equipment immediately in order to finish before the
contest should start. Everything has to be brought in from Split,
food, power generators, fuel, the lighthouse can only offer shelter
, drinking water and a wonderfull hospitality of the two crew members,
Jadran and Lucijan. Moreover , boats larger than 5 meters can not
dock anywhere on the island , we must shuttle with Lucijans small
boat , offload on the Southern Beach and carry everyting by hand
about 1 km away and 90 m up to the lighthouse , hit the 'highway'
folks! One meter wide goat track! When the going gets tough.....
It gets dark arround 9 local time, we're in for a big suprise ,
mosquitoes! Amazing! Not a single one two years ago during our first
expedition , but now! You don't want to know....Still, 9A4NA managed
to catch 'Mercedes' - the only means of transportation on the
island - a donkey! That was the greatest success of the expedition,
because he runs freely on the island, if the crew needs him to carry
stuff they have to tie him at 4 o'clock in the morning when he comes
to the lighthouse to drink water. Otherwise, he just takes a good
look at you as you carry stuff, and starts laughing...have you ever
heard a donkey laughing?
25jun98 , Saturday, the contest
has started. We're still connecting cables. If we didn't get Mercedes,
we would have never made it on time. Lost 7 initial minutes, now
QRV.
26jun98 , Sunday, contest finished
at 1200z , 1211 QSO's scored. Pileup still strong. We are very happy
with propagations to DX, unlike 2 years ago, this time we can actually
do some DX! Well, the contest pressure finished, let's pick up some
DX... 1340z 21MHz SSB, 9A2AA calls: -Who else is on the island with
You guys? -????? -There is an Italian on 14.266, QTH EU-090. 1341z
14.266MHz, 9A/IK8MRA calling 'from IOTA EU-090' , 3 by 3 copy! six
to seven hundred meters air distance? No way!!! 9A3NU just left
for a tour arround the island , if he had seen this guy he would
have for sure called us on VHF... I announce on 14.266 that this
callsign is definitely not on Palagruza, do a QSO with S52KM and
9A2AA and QSY back to 15 meters. 1345z back on 21MHz SSB. Buisness
as usual. Can't get this guy out of my head. Cheeky character ,
isn't he , I think....If we haven't been on the island he might
have gotten away with it..!?.. 1351z 21MHz SSB, 9A2AA calls again:
-Pero, will you please check, this guy is back on the air on 14.266
and claims he's on the Southern Beach with the telescopic antenna?!
- Okay Tom,will handle that... Now I'm really fed up with this man...I'll
go there myself eventhough I know he is not there... 1352z 9A8P
QRT, 9A4SP and 9A3LO 'QSY' to the beach for a swim.. Few minutes
later we are on the Southern beach. I wonder if those seagulls are
italians...maybe one of them is IK8MRA, but where is his radio,
battery and telescopic antenna? Well he might have one of those
wrist watches from James Bond movies with a kilowatt HF radio built
in. You never know. If I scare him off , maybe he'll fly off to
Kingman Reef and give me an oportunity to work a new country...
We meet Lucijan and 9A3NU on the beach. They
just came back from sightseeing arround the island. They've even
been to the smaller island Mala Palagruza. They haven't seen any
HAMs anywhere. There are 3 boats in the bay. Two fishing boats from
Vis and one 9 meter Italian yacht. Well , lets take a swim . I swim
over to the closest fisherman and ask him if he saw any of the Italians
going to the beach with some radios, or something like that..no,
no, none of the italians have been off their yacht at all he says.
Curious as one can be I swim arround the italian yacht just to hear
if anyone yells 'CQ' from inside the yacht, I can only imagine their
thoughts as they were looking at me invading their privacy and interrupting
their fishing stories... Well at least I had a refreshment after
a long working day in the shack. As the daylight fades away, 15
meters is still wide open. All through the night...Very good DX
average. Europe during the day..some people just don't want to understand
that we have to do some DX. Previous expedition was allmost 100
percent Europe, most of the contest this year as well. Now when
we have propagation to DX some people just don't want to let us
do any...
Evening 28jul98
brought us some wind, finally a refreshment, we thought. As the
clouds accumulated over Vis island we started worrying. The night
was scary indeed. Suddenly we heard thunders, and the wind went
crazy. At 3 in the morning 9A3LO and me were so worried that we
went outside to have a look, The top of the antenna (only about
5 meters above the ground) was moving 1 meter north, 1 meter south
every few seconds. 'What can we do if it starts falling, Sem? We
can only watch it fall.'100 meters into the abyss , and straight
into the deep sea. Later in the morning when Jadran and Lucijan
collected information from the weather instruments for their daily
weather report, they told us the wind was sometimes faster than
100 kilometers per hour. Wouldn't have been a problem if it was
steady, but this is the middle of the Adriatic, wind is constantly
changing speed and direction, like if it had mind of its own, just
like if it really wanted to sweep everything off the surface...we
spend the rest of the morning collecting scattered things arround
the lighthouse. The wind has calmed down a little bit. We heard
that the storm has set a large number of forrest fires back on the
mainland. We can still hear thunders in the distance, but no rain.
QRN is heavy - 40 and 80 meters totally useless.We are running out
of fuel, no, no, not the one for the generators, but the one for
us..how can 5 men burn 20 liters of wine in six evenings?
30jul98 0945z arround 3.5K QSO's logged, our boat is in the Southern
beach bay, a bit sooner than expected... 'Switch everything off'
9A3NU says, 'we must go!' We have to depart in less than 3 hours!
Oh, my God, why do we allways have to be in a hurry? Why do the
good things allways have to be short? OK, let's go , untill next
time, maybe on Brijuni?
Radio Club Split 9A1AKL (9A2A)
has organised the second expedition to Palagruza Island (IOTA EU090)
in order to take part in this years IOTA contest. This remote group
is situated roughly 42 deg 5 min NORTH and 16 deg 5 min EAST , grid
loc. JN82DJ. Members of the expedition were: 9A4NA,9A3NU,9A3LO and
myself, 9A4SP. Just like two years ago,we have operated from the
lighthouse 'Palagruz', built in 1875 , on the largest island of
the group Vela Palagruza. This location is the highest peak of the
island group , about 90 meters high , and the rest of the island
as well as the other two islands (Mala Palagruza and Galijula) and
all the rocks are clearly visible from there.
26jun98 , Sunday, contest finished
at 1200z , 1211 QSO's scored. Pileup still strong. We are very happy
with propagations to DX, unlike 2 years ago, this time we can actually
do some DX! Well, the contest pressure finished, let's pick up some
DX... 1340z 21MHz SSB, 9A2AA calls: -Who else is on the island with
You guys? -????? -There is an Italian on 14.266, QTH EU-090. 1341z
14.266MHz, 9A/IK8MRA calling 'from IOTA EU-090' , 3 by 3 copy! six
to seven hundred meters air distance? No way!!! 9A3NU just left
for a tour arround the island , if he had seen this guy he would
have for sure called us on VHF... I announce on 14.266 that this
callsign is definitely not on Palagruza, do a QSO with S52KM and
9A2AA and QSY back to 15 meters. 1345z back on 21MHz SSB. Buisness
as usual. Can't get this guy out of my head. Cheeky character ,
isn't he , I think....If we haven't been on the island he might
have gotten away with it..!?.. 1351z 21MHz SSB, 9A2AA calls again:
-Pero, will you please check, this guy is back on the air on 14.266
and claims he's on the Southern Beach with the telescopic antenna?!
- Okay Tom,will handle that... Now I'm really fed up with this man...I'll
go there myself eventhough I know he is not there... 1352z 9A8P
QRT, 9A4SP and 9A3LO 'QSY' to the beach for a swim.. Few minutes
later we are on the Southern beach. I wonder if those seagulls are
italians...maybe one of them is IK8MRA, but where is his radio,
battery and telescopic antenna? Well he might have one of those
wrist watches from James Bond movies with a kilowatt HF radio built
in. You never know. If I scare him off , maybe he'll fly off to
Kingman Reef and give me an oportunity to work a new country...
We meet Lucijan and 9A3NU on the beach. They
just came back from sightseeing arround the island. They've even
been to the smaller island Mala Palagruza. They haven't seen any
HAMs anywhere. There are 3 boats in the bay. Two fishing boats from
Vis and one 9 meter Italian yacht. Well , lets take a swim . I swim
over to the closest fisherman and ask him if he saw any of the Italians
going to the beach with some radios, or something like that..no,
no, none of the italians have been off their yacht at all he says.
Curious as one can be I swim arround the italian yacht just to hear
if anyone yells 'CQ' from inside the yacht, I can only imagine their
thoughts as they were looking at me invading their privacy and interrupting
their fishing stories... Well at least I had a refreshment after
a long working day in the shack. As the daylight fades away, 15
meters is still wide open. All through the night...Very good DX
average. Europe during the day..some people just don't want to understand
that we have to do some DX. Previous expedition was allmost 100
percent Europe, most of the contest this year as well. Now when
we have propagation to DX some people just don't want to let us
do any...
Evening 28jul98
brought us some wind, finally a refreshment, we thought. As the
clouds accumulated over Vis island we started worrying. The night
was scary indeed. Suddenly we heard thunders, and the wind went
crazy. At 3 in the morning 9A3LO and me were so worried that we
went outside to have a look, The top of the antenna (only about
5 meters above the ground) was moving 1 meter north, 1 meter south
every few seconds. 'What can we do if it starts falling, Sem? We
can only watch it fall.'100 meters into the abyss , and straight
into the deep sea. Later in the morning when Jadran and Lucijan
collected information from the weather instruments for their daily
weather report, they told us the wind was sometimes faster than
100 kilometers per hour. Wouldn't have been a problem if it was
steady, but this is the middle of the Adriatic, wind is constantly
changing speed and direction, like if it had mind of its own, just
like if it really wanted to sweep everything off the surface...we
spend the rest of the morning collecting scattered things arround
the lighthouse. The wind has calmed down a little bit. We heard
that the storm has set a large number of forrest fires back on the
mainland. We can still hear thunders in the distance, but no rain.
QRN is heavy - 40 and 80 meters totally useless.We are running out
of fuel, no, no, not the one for the generators, but the one for
us..how can 5 men burn 20 liters of wine in six evenings?