Last night I had a tune across the 20m band and found there was quite a bit of activity coming out of Europe on the short path. Many of those stations were participating in the LZ DX Contest.
I worked a number of those stations, but what was really exciting last night was that I was hearing some of the European WWFF & SOTA activators.
My equipment:-
- Yaesu FT-2000
- 100 watts
- 5 element yagi @ about 15 metres from the ground
The first European portable station in the log was Pit YP1WFF who was activating Coridorul Ialomitei YOFF-0485 in Romania.
Next was YU1OS Kosutnjak YUFF-0058 in Serbia. Kosutnjaks a park-forest and urban neighbourhood of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia.
My next European portable activator logged was SV2RUJ/p who was activating SOTA peak SV/ MC-025 in Greece. This un-named SOTA summit is 1,558 metres in height and is worth 6 SOTA points.
Above:- Map of Greece showing the location of SV/ MC-025. Map courtesy of Google maps
After logging these stations I decided to prop on a frequency and put out a CQ call. I ended up with a pile-up from Europe and the Middle East. By 1.30 a.m. I was getting really tired and decided to go QRT, with many stations still calling. All up I logged about 60 European, Middle Eastern and South-East Asian stations.
Hopefully, this is a sign that the band conditions are improving.
References.
Wikipedia, 2019, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ko%C5%A1utnjak>, viewed 17th November 2019
VK5PAS 