Between 30.06 and 02.07 me and Zoli YO2BP will travel to Southern Serbia near Surdulica, where will perform a SOTA tour together with a team of serbian hams. We will try to activate 8 different 10-points summits in YU/JS region, both in CW and SSB, usual frequencies for SOTA on 7, 10 & 14 MHz. Look for us in frequencies because I’m not sure how good will be the phone signal in that area. If possible, all activations will be spotted on SOTAspots.
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Sorin
Hope to work you on Saturday and Sunday
73
Neil
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I will listen for your callsign dear friend Neil. On Saturday I will activate 4 summits all the day and on Sunday only 2 summits in the morning, then back home in the afternoon 400km.
Very nice. I will be in that period also in Serbia, but in ZS region (Uzice).
See you on the bands, maybe S2S too.
GL, 73 from Alex
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Excellent Alex, you are not far away from us (aprox. 150km) so I will look for you also for a S2S, maybe even on 2m. See you on the bands!
GL & 73
I just got an information that a group of YU hams (YU1RK, YU1CA and some more) will be doing some SOTA and WWFF activations during this weekend also (starting tomorrow, Friday June 30).
They plan to activate YU/IS-036 (Friday), and YU/IS-059 (Saturday), and maybe some more.
Good luck to all activators!
73 Fric YU1WC
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Another great news Fric! We will listen also for them to make S2S.
I will meet tomorrow in Surdulica our host Miki YT1CS and his friends from Vlasina Radioclub and we will activate together. It seems you have a great SOTA team there, Fric.
BTW, I saw already some videos on Youtube with the Vlasina region and it looks awesome!
Hi Sorin,
Very pleased to catch you, Zoli and Miki today on YU/JS-010.
As I write it is now 17.39BST/16:39UTC and the thunder crackles get louder, time to pull the plug in awhile 
Have a relaxing evening and hope to catch you tomorrow.
Night night.
Mike
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Back home faster than foreseen, due to bad weather coming in Southern Serbia. Earned 50 points from 5 summits. Excellent propagation, we were able to work a lot of chasers even with 10W on SSB and a linked dipole. Quick exchange of operators cuold be tricky for the chasers sometime, this is why you need to listen carefully on frequency. I tried to spot every activation with the list of operators. Very limited access to internet, in Serbia for a foreigner 1MB of internet costs you 10.59 euros (!!!). Better to buy a serbian traveller prepaid SIM: unlimited calls in Serbia and 1GB of internet for 7 days, costs you 5 euro. I wasn’t able to activate my new MTS card, even with the help of the serbian call center…
Surdulica region is a beautiful area, with very nice & friendly people. Very easy to access via the A1 highway. The Vlasina Lake is an excellent destination for tourists travelling with campers or tents, a lot of free places to camp. The food is good, natural, and the prices are low. Some hotels or guesthouses are available, prices around 20 euro for a night. The lake is exactly in the middle of the YU/JS activation area.
The summits are not very easy to reach. There are a lot of forestry roads going everywhere, but half of them in very poor shape and no road signs. You need a very good 4x4 car to approach most of the summits. And a very good GPS or detailed maps. Yesterday we lost 4 hours trying to find the right road. Interesting is that the serbians have a lot of old military jeeps looking not very tough but exceptionally on the mountain, I was impressed of what them can do.
Probably the best destination for a quick activation passing through the area is Besna Kobila YU/JS-001, the road is very good up to 500m near the summit even for a normal car. The sightseeings worth completely the effort. The excellent “russian road” (Ruski Put - 442) takes you about 30km between the fairy tale mountains.
What a great destination could be that area - generally for the tourism - with some investments on levelling the forestry roads and building some hotels/guesthouses! The people is excellent and the food is very tasty. Remember the times when everything was natural and free and without any rule but decency and common sense? That’s the idea.
I want to thank now Miki YT1CS, a very kind OM, for his warm welcome and his friendship. Hope to meet him again for other SOTA adventures.
Pictures will follow and a link will be inserted here.
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Hi Sorin,
Many thanks to you, Miki and Zoli for your efforts, well done.
Thanks for the background information in your short report. I went to that area and others hundreds of years ago but then it was called Yugoslavia
Very best wishes.
Mike
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Thank you too Mike for all your support during the activations. And thanks to all other chasers, our mission was easy once we managed to spot us on SOTA cluster.
Next activations for me: Sunday 09/07 from SP/BZ and starting from Tuesday 11/07 - 3 days of activations before Friedrichshafen Ham Radio 2017 in DM/BW region, only 10 points summits.
All of these are preparations for my MG trophee, possible to be earned during this year’s edition of the YO SOTA Marathon in August.
Meet you all again in a couple of days!
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