Just a heads up to say I will be on holiday in Crete as SV9/G4OBK/P starting on Saturday 11/05/24 until 23/05/24
I am hoping to hire a car for 3 days and I am planning to activate SV/CR-031 Loutsi one day, and SV/CR-033 Louldakis on another day (Thanks to Gerald @MW0WML/P for sharing his track on SOTA Mapping / SOTLAS). I will alert the previous day to the activity taking place. I will use a KX3 barefoot with a link dipole for 20/30/40m and a Flowerpot vertical end fed dipole for 10m in CW/SSB. There will be no FT8.
The third day of the car hire we are hoping to visit the Doric settlement of Lato near to Kritsi, which a friend has recommended has being worth visiting.
If I am able to get an antenna up in our hotel I will do some chasing just on 10 metres - to take advantage of the advent of Sporadic e which has started to now show. I’ve made 3750 QSOs from Crete on two holidays, 30 years ago and 20 years ago.
In 1994 I made 1214 QSOs in 6 days. This was before I acquired a fishing pole, but I found a 12 feet length of bamboo lying in a bamboo plantation near to our self catering accommodation which supported my antenna!
Twenty years later iin 2004 with my current XYL Judy, we stayed in a hotel. I had acquired a 10m DK9SQ HD fishing pole. It was Olympic Year in Greece and I applied for and was allocated the callsign J42004Q which created some enormous pile ups from 07/09/04-15/09/04 when the call expired. I then reverted to SV9/G4OBK/P from 16/09/04- 21/09/04 when I went QRT. In that fortnight I made another 2536 QSOs!
So here I am - 20 years later from my last visit again returning to Crete for another holiday - but this time with SOTA as SV9/G4OBK/P. If you work me on 10m and I haven’t alerted for either of the two summits I will be Chasing and not Activating.
Here are some photos of my J42004Q 2004 activity from Perle, Chania, Crete. I carried a lot of gear on the holiday and operated CW/SSB and RTTY. PSK31 had not yet been conceived. The antenna then was a G5RV with 300 ohm ribbon. An aerial now superceded in my arsenal by an OCFD dipole which seems more flexible and efficient if the longer length on one sde can be accommodated… I didn’t ask for permission from the hotel to set up my station. I just put the pole and antenna up on our balcony and operated wthout question for two weeks!
73 Phil G4OBK
