The daily weather forecast reported sunny and very hot. I opted for an early morning activation: a summit quick to reach is Mt Due Mani, not very good for an afternoon activation due to the absence of trees to protect yourself from the sun.
My dog Zac woke me up at 5:30 local time. At 6:00 we were driving to Forcella di Olino. The car thermometer showed 23 degrees, the parking is located at about 1000mt of altitude, the humidity was very high. My hope was to be alone at that time, but I already found some parked cars. I thought of some group that had gone up the day before to sleep at the bivouac. Berfore 7:00 we were walking along the path. The first half of the route was slightly uphill in the woods, it was a sauna! The second half came out of the wood, the slope increased and you go up through the flowery meadows.
It was very pleasurable to feel the fresh breeze and I stopped to take some pictures of the
different types of flowers.
I read the last topic of @M0WIV about your first cw activaton and Orchidea pics, I think that this is a comun type.
In about an hour we reached the top. Aat the top I was not alone, in the bivouac there was a group of people who had just woken up. I positioned in my usual place and after having fed Zac I started to layout the new awg28 light wire. The length was about 40 meters. in the middle I fixed it to the fishing rod. I wanted to try a new configuration, found in article on the web: Half Delta Loop Antenna - Radio Electronics 1997-08 halfdelta loop for low bands and its variants, half square, I opted for the half rhombus, the simplest by using only one fishing pole. I laid two radials with awg24 wire on the ground, also about 40 meters long. I tried to feed directly to the kx3 but in 80 meter the ATU showed 1.8 swr, I tried to use a 64: 1, the result was positive swr 1.0. I started calling on 80 meters at 3.557 cw.
I saw the first spots appear on rbn client, good signal/noise reports , considering my 5watts.
I managed to log DJ5AV very strong, DL1FU with a lot of qsb and HB9BCB at the limit of noise. I also spotted on the various whatapp chats and the fourth qso was with IK1GPG. after a few minutes of unanswered calls i went to 80 ssb but this make no one qso. i went in 20cw getting s2s with ik2ley, so9ta and some chaesers. I went back to 80cw which was 9 o’clock for one qso with F5LKW, and then to 60cw ending in 40 ssb with only two qsos, I was expecting the pileup but it wasn’t like that.
When other people started to arrive I put everything back in my backpack and went down, I took a 20 minute break in a small valley where there is a cool spring, Zac immersed himself in the pool and he took a nap.
thanks at All
73!
The white flower might be Alpine anemone Pulsatilla alpina but I’m not sure. A close relative if it isn’t. The blue flower might also be Alpine Gentian Gentiana alpina or again a relative.
Looking again they are too tall to be a normal gentian