After our last visit to Crete Isl. ( SV9 ) in 2000, we decide to visit another DXCC country and my thoughts fell to Kos SV5.

As this was a last minute decision , I didn’t had much time to ask for permission to transmit from the Hotel before we left. And of course I took my radio gear with me. We stayed in hotel Astron, who is located in the Harbour. Our room was on the main floor, and this Hotel has three stories with an iron fence on the roof .

My equipment: FT- 897 , a G5RV (borrowed from PA4JJ tnx Jan) and CT logging software. The feeder of the antenna was 10.30m, so it was just as long as the total height of the Hotel.

I started transmitting after the 5 th day of my spare time....hi, my XYL was reading a book, so that gave me the opportunity to give it a go. The 20m band worked well and also 17m did, logged many stations from Russia and Japan. The antenna didn’t resonate well on the other bands, and due my low power (50wtt) and bad swr i decide to work most on these bands. Next year i will bring a tuner and we will ask for room nr 23, then i have the opportunity to connect the antenna 2m higher. It was now to close by the ground and the dipoles were to close to the fence. But in spite of all I had great fun and i made 650 QSO's in CW and 50 RTTY qso’s .

We had a great time there and the people were very friendly. And ofcourse we had every day clear blue sky, nice weather for swimming seawater temperature was 26 dgr.

I will thank the hotel manager from Astron. We want to book early next year to be sure to get room nr. 23.

QSL is ok via the bureau.

Henk pa3gcv

03-11-06  SV5...QSL cards dropt at QSL bureau.