Just back from my holidays around south Italy with my RV.
As always I’ve taken with me the Go-Bag for holidays that includes Battery, FT-857D, Morse Key, paper logbook and wires… Fishing pole was alreay on my RV.
Despite from last year on IT9 this time I’ve been able to accomodate family duties with spare time… and on Agust 16th I’ve been able to find the proper location and moment to make some calls.
Not much, just 15 QSOs under the sun and a nice wind, I used my FT-857D powered by an external battery. Antenna used is as always my easy-to-deploy end-fed wire antenna for 20 meters band, supported by my 10 meters high fiberglass fishing pole.
Additionally I used a pole taken from my RV, to support the other end of the antenna.
The location was Punta Prosciutto, in Salento Puglia, sitted down on the rocks, about 5 meters from the sea.
Reports
Well, I’ve been surprised of such good conditions and how easy has been to contact several stations from Africa, Asia and Indian Ocean. As always, in these situations I’m more interested on evaluating my portable radio setup than making contacts… and in such cases, ReverseBeaconNetwork is the main source I use to evaluate performance.
Reverse beacon report for my CQs is here
I have had some noise, QRM was steady around S6-S7 but signals were really very strong. I used most of the time 40W.
Opening lasted for a couple of hours since I started then band closed and decided to QRT.
