Hello fellow SOTA crew! Me and a couple of friends have planned a hiking trip to UKK national park (OH/SL region) in Finland next week. Here’s a quick briefing about the trip.
According to our schedule we should reach:
*OH/SL-014 Kaarnepää, Monday Aug 26.
*OH/SL-001 Sokosti, Wednesday Aug 28.
*OH/SL-005 Lupukkapää, Thursday Aug 29.
on mentioned day during light time.
I’m unable to say exact times since we are moving a long way on foot and therefore there are a lot of variables and things that can go wrong. So please don’t be too disappointed if we aren’t able to make it.
Modes and freqs we have planned to use:
10.118 CW
14.064 CW
14.342 SSB
All 4 of us are military trained and (at least theoretically, hi) capable of CW but I’m the only one holding a ham licence. Also none of us are really fluent with CW so please bear with us and QRS enough.
The call we’ll be using is OH6VA/P and possibly, if we get the permission, OI8AY/P.
I really hope we’ll make it and I’m looking forward to hear you on band. Wish me luck! =)
The trip is over now and we had a bit bad luck as we managed successfully activate only Sokosti, OH/SL-001. So Kaarnepää (OH/SL-014, two QSO’s) and Lupukkapää (OH/SL-005, no QSO’s at all) are waiting next pedition.
We were on air at the first summit, Kaarnepää, at about 1515 UTC which was definitely too late for 20 m working. At first it seemed we could not get any QSO’s but to my surprise we managed to work two stations! The wind was severe and when it started raining we were ready to give up and left the summit to establish a camp for the night coming.
The second day went without radio but on third day we climbed to Sokosti, the highest summit of the UKK National Park and the whole Eastern Lapland. We were on air a bit before 12 UTC – the time I announced at SOTA alerts. The activation went well – except sadly we had to leave a bunch of keen chasers without a QSO because we had to conserve battery for next day’s final summit.
Packing up turned out to be a very good decision: A short moment later we noticed a heavy rain front coming right at us. A short moment later followed the quickest stage of the whole hike.
On the fourth day drying up things was the most crucial thing to do, so our departure from the camp delayed. We had set up at Lupukkapää at about 15 UTC which again turned out to be too late – to our disappointment no QSO’s at all.
Nice photos. Could not hear you from Kuopio on Kaarnepää or Sokosti. I guess your radio is not very energy efficient for long expeditions if you need to save batteries.