SOTA trip to Baltics and OH73ELK 29th May - 9 June 2025

Activation Reports Pre-Planning
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Folks!
End of May a group of fife Austrian HAMs try to activate all available SOTA summits in all three Baltic States. Our trip starts on 29th of May from Vienna travelling through Czechia and Poland to the Baltics. From the Tallin we use a ferry to Finnland to stay for a week at OH73ELK. Also, in Finnland we try to activate at least one SOTA summit each day. Over all we hope to have 20 additional entries in our logs.

Most of the summits are already announced - have a look! Eventually we do more depending on time and WX. The speciality during this trip is:

  1. activate all SOTA summits in each Baltic state: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, to gain the three more “activated entire association” badges :slight_smile: OK that’s easy there but even 50% more effort than in the Netherlands last year…
  2. at least one activation in every country we travel through, only exception is hour home country Austria due to lack of time.
  3. eventually, depending on time and required effort, activation via QO-100

During our time in Finnland we will work on 40/30/20m (upper bands depending on condis) in SSB/CW and on QO-100 every day from the OH73ELK hut.

The team is OE1IAH (me the coordinator), OE1RHC, OE1MVA, OE1LZS and OE3BAJ. This are almost all board members of “Landesverband Wien”. We hope to get in contact with other HAMs. Especially the three Baltic states SOTA activations are seldom on air, so there is a good chance to chase the summits there.
OH73ELK offers a special award: requires at least one contact to each of the 10 regions in Finnland a contact with a HAM operating from the OH73ELK house. We will be there from 1st of June till Friday. So, a good chance for everybody to work that call.

We did similar trips the recent 3 years, hope to hear one or the other call again. More information about the trip is available at OH73ELK Reise 2025 bilingual german / english. The weeks after I’m back I will offer a trip report with lots of pictures on that site. I will be on the ÖVSV booth on HAM Radio and of June in Friedrichshafen offering more information about the SOTA goals and lots of pictures… I plan to stay on the ÖVSV and SOTA booth.

73 de OE1IAH

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Dear all!
Tomorrow, Thursday 29th starting at 6:00 a.m., the OE1 travel group will gradually depart for the OH73ELK radio cabin. We’ll be doing a lot, including a lot of HAM activity.

About 20 very rarely activated SOTA targets will be activated, mainly on HF 80m to 10m in SSB and CW. We will spot our activities as far as it is possible.

Starting next Sunday June 1st, we’ll be on OH73ELK, where we’ll be operating intensively on HF, and for the first time at this special location, we’ll also have a QO-100 station there.
During the trip, Meshcom will be present, and we’ll also be broadcasting APRS positions as OE1IAH-1 using this mechanism, as this mode of operation is particularly suited to HAM.
There’s also classic 2m APRS as OE1IAH-9, where you can clearly see the coverage of the areas with 2m receivers.
There will be a blog in the evening at Reise Blog: OH73ELK with pictures from the day (text is German only in the blog)
More information at https://oe1iah.at/

We hope many HAMs will contact us. There are several awards for the travel ares you can work on, and our QSOs with you will count. Of course, there’s also a travel award for all stations that have worked with us somewhere.

Our goal is to activate all available SOTA targets in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to collect 3 more [Sotadata3](https://complete list) badges :slight_smile:

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Being an ex-LY it is such a shame I am working on Friday!
I’ll see if I can get you on YL/ES/OH though.
Best of luck folks!

73 de EI4JY (ex LY3LZ), Alex

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Hope to work you on one of the other summits. Actually, there are 3 chances for each of the baltic countries to get in contact with us!

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