Moshchnyy Island (IOTA EU-133, RR-01-03) is situated about 140 km west of St.Petersburg
exactly on the 60th parallel.
The island is about 5km in diameter with a lake on it. Formerly there was a
navy base on the island but now the total population consists of a lighthouse
keeper and a platoon of the frontier guards. Till this time it's been quite a problem
to obtain
permission for landing on the island. Getting it took us about two months.
There were seven men in our team but only two, Sergey (UA1ANA) and Slava (RA1ACJ), were hams. The others were friends who wanted to take advantage of the good hunting and fishing on the island.
The perfect weather in late August was a pleasant surprise. We usually aren't this lucky in the fall. The temperature was around 20C with rain only at night. Every morning we went around picking mushrooms which were very plentiful on the island. The hunting and fishing were perfect and by the end of our trip we had eaten our fill of fresh fish.
We had two operating stations. The first was an ICOM-706MKII with an R7000 vertical antenna and the second position was another ICOM-706MKII with a GP antenna for 20 meters. The operation also included a 2 meter setup working into a 9 element Yagi. The power supplies consisted of three 75A/H and two 55A/H accumulators.
In opposition to the good weather the propagation was rather poor for the whole period of operatioin (23 to 29 Ausust). However we did manage to make 1600 QSOs mostly with European station and to work all continents. A total of 30 QSOs were made on 2 meters with the most distant contact being with UA1CFM about 250 km away.
There were seven men in our team but only two, Sergey (UA1ANA) and Slava (RA1ACJ), were hams. The others were friends who wanted to take advantage of the good hunting and fishing on the island.
The perfect weather in late August was a pleasant surprise. We usually aren't this lucky in the fall. The temperature was around 20C with rain only at night. Every morning we went around picking mushrooms which were very plentiful on the island. The hunting and fishing were perfect and by the end of our trip we had eaten our fill of fresh fish.
We had two operating stations. The first was an ICOM-706MKII with an R7000 vertical antenna and the second position was another ICOM-706MKII with a GP antenna for 20 meters. The operation also included a 2 meter setup working into a 9 element Yagi. The power supplies consisted of three 75A/H and two 55A/H accumulators.
In opposition to the good weather the propagation was rather poor for the whole period of operatioin (23 to 29 Ausust). However we did manage to make 1600 QSOs mostly with European station and to work all continents. A total of 30 QSOs were made on 2 meters with the most distant contact being with UA1CFM about 250 km away.
translated by RZ1AK
