This wants to be the story of my “vacation” activations that I have done in the last few weeks. I went on a trip with my 12-year-old son Emilio between Croatia and Umbria and I took the opportunity to activate some Sota summits that I found near the vacation spots. The first place was the beautiful island of Cres, in the northern part of Croatia called Istria. Very barren island, with beautiful beaches and sunny peaks. Here I activated two peaks in two different days, 9A /PH-037 Velo Gračište and 9A / PH-047 Zlostan, both very similar, altitude around 500 meters and which can be reached a walk of about 30/40 minutes Both peaks they had a series of rocks on the top where it was easy to mount my fishing rod and use the usual longwire antenna and the Elecraft Kx3.
Both very beautiful places, with the sea around and the incredible silence of the Croatian islands.
After 4 days at sea we moved back to Italy to reach friends in Umbria. Along the journey I took the opportunity to take Emilio to visit the VIlla Griffone in Sasso Marconi, the place where in 1896 Guglielmo Marconi launched the first radio signals in the world.
From there we arrived at Vignaie, a small village near Perugia. Here I have activated two mountains, I / UM-093 Monte Petrarvella and I / UM-098 Monte Marzolana, very similar too. Height of about 600 meters and the presence of tall trees on the top. Here too 40 minutes of walking for both and the need to mount a final antenna pulled between the trees.
In this case I tie a stone to a wire tied to my wire antenna, I pull it on the mast and use this makeshift slooper as an antenna. My operating mode is always, first 30 meters on CW and then 20 meters on SSB and then other bands and other QSOs to look for S2S.
In general, many QSOs with many friends, thanks to all the chasers, were easy activations on simple mountains but with a lot of pleasure and fun. Now it’s time to go back to Rome to work and the next activations will be from my beloved Apennine mountains