Green Party on top of YO/EC-008

Saturday, 9th of June was organized the very first EUFF Green Party, an activity encouraging the activation of Natural Parks all over the world and I had a free weekend after quite a long time and even better the forecast was surprisingly good given the very bad weather lately, so I decided I have to go out activating. The summit YO/EC-008 (Piatra Mare, Nagykő-havas, Hohenstein) was already a top target for me, being the second closest summit to Brassó (the closest one YO/EC-011 already activated this year) and also promised to visit soon YO6HSH running the hut on Nagykő.
The whole mountain is in the Natura2000 reserve YOFF-379, so it is also the right place for a Green Party activation, and given that one can sleep over at the hut which is like 200m down ( 1 hour walk up ) from the summit, it is also available for a whole day long activation.
So friday afternoon I met with YO6HSH and YO6HXJ going up to the hut with some supplies and I also tagged along for a nice easy (yeah sure!) hike up on the family trail (red stripe). This is the easiest trail to the hut, even the donkeys can take it.

some help is needed to carry up everything to the hut

With a very few stops, just to enjoy the scenery

View to the summit above the Bears Ravine (Medve-szakadék, Prăpastia Ursului)

 we finally made to the hut just before sunset.

YO6HSH making some QSOs at the last blazes of the sun

 Of course some preparations are needed for sleeping :)

that's just me

 The next day very early started out to the summit continuing along the red stripe

Irott-kő

 The first part is rather steep until the Irott-kő (Piatra Scrisă), but after the is just the plateu,with the summit on the other end of course :)

The plateu of Nagykő

 I arrived to the summit just before the official start of the Green Party ( 06:00 UTC )

The summit: 1844m altitude

 So after I caught my breath and a few glimpses of the panorama around

Panorama of the Bucegi mountains and Predeal city from the summit

 I quickly set up the gear near the summit

The activation area (with last time activated YO/EC-028 in the background)

 and started operating. Well I did try my best, but it seems that the HAM gods were not with me this day, propagation was terribly wrong, I hardly could manage a few contacts per hour. So after about 8 hours on the summit with almost nothing in the log (somewhere around 60 contacts) and because of some real ugly clouds started coming in my direction I decided to call it off and pack up my gear.

Ugly clouds

 Hiked down to the hut (this time it was much easier like 40mins) and spent the evening down

Some more sunset shots of the hut

 and made some more shots around in the sunset

The ruins of the old hut

 Also gave a try to continue the Green Party from down there (even if not on the summit but I still was in the YOFF area), no luck though

Kept CQing into the evening

Slept over again in the hut and the next morning started out the hike back down, this time on the much more picturesque but also harder trail towards the Seven Ladder (Hét-létra, Șapte Scări) canyon. The trail well marked with yellow strip takes down rather steep in the forest

The path goes through dark forest and shiny clearings

 and finally into a deep canyon with very nice waterfalls

waterfall

 The proper canyon is a very narrow and very deep one (something around 160m long with a height difference of 60m) and the only way of going through is by seven very steep and very long ladders pinned into the walls of the canyon

one of the ladders

and another one

The whole canyon with all the waterfalls is extremely beautiful, I think it's a must when visiting the region.
After the canyon is still a long trail along the stream but without much height difference, so is rather boring.
Unfortunately the activation was a fail, but at least I could give out the reference for a few chasers, but the scenery is well worth it, I can only recommend for future activators. I will certainly come back...

YO/EC-028 Activation

I started out the long weekend (due to 1st of May being a national holiday and having monday also free) of thinking to give another shot to the fishing pole antenna and do a nice HF activation of the nearby Măgura Codlei (Kotla, Zeidner Berg) peak.
It is also a good training as I got a little bit lazy during the winter, and the 600m elevation is still a good challenge for me.
So I started out from the edge of Codlea (Feketehalom, Zeiden), the city of which the mountain got its name. The route to the summit is well marked starting right from the city center with three hiking paths (red, blue and yellow triangles) starting from the same spot and later devirging to attack the summit from 3 different sides (with combination of red dot and blue cross).
The yellow triangle take very soon to the left, while the red and blue keeps together for quite a bit. I started following the latter.
After a quick glimpse back to the city from the edge of the woods:

Codlea city

 I started out on the large, easy to follow and well marked trail:

the sun was shining though the woods promising a wonderful day

After about two hours of walk the blue and red triangles diverge, with the red one going directly to the summit, while the blue going toward the ruins of the Black Castle, from where the red dot would go on along the ridge to the summit. I choose the former, much shorted but also much steeper trail. A narrow winding path through the forest followed with some nice spring scenery:

Finally, after another hour of walk (and lots of rests) I have arrived to a small clearing with a pole marking the peak: Vf. Măgura 1292m

some quick photos around the summit

 and of the panorama around the summit

The summit stone with Piatra Craiului in the background

 Unfortunately there is only a clear view to the south, the other ways being a dense ring of trees and bush, but at least a good view of the Făgăraș (Fogarasi havasok):

Făgăraș mountains from Măgura Codlei

 and of the Piatra Craiului (Királykő):

Piatra Craiului from Măgura Codlei

After enjoying a little bit the panorama and quick few QSOs on VHF, I started putting together the HF setup, the vertical antenna on the fishing pole:

and the FT-817 with the Z-817 tuner

And of course finding out what did I left out, as always do; well this time it was the power cables for the FT-817, so I carried the SLAB for nothing, but at least the internal batteries were also fully charged, so I could start calling CQ on 20m. After a rather slow start stations started to come back, and I really started to enjoy this setup (actually this was the first real tryout of this combination of antenna and station) and after N1EU came back with a 33 report I was really excited, my first transatlantic QSO, a very good way to start the HF SOTA experience. After an hour of CQ-ing on 20m and QSO becoming scarce, I also did a quick tour on 10m, but after the a somewhat hard QSO with a Brazilian station which was answering to the QSO more because of being european and not for SOTA, and of course the batteries starting to deplete I called off. But before just turning of returned to 20m just to scan the frequency I stumbled upon OK7OK/p on OK/US-002, so a nice S2S completed a rather pleasant day.
But as my batteries were going down, the time was quite in the afternoon so I packed up and after a quick glimpse back to the summit:

 started going down, this time on the red dot trail along the ridge, the longer path down but which also give the opportunity to enjoy the funny rocks:

 and the panoramas between them:

The trail down the ridge was also rather steep sometimes with some rock climbing needed:

but below the ridge a nice clearing awaited with a nice view towards Brașov (Brassó, Kronstadt)

Brașov city as seen form the north-eastern slope of the Măgura Codlei

I arrived back to Codlea almost in the dark and rather tired (the whole descent being a half hour longer then the climbing was) but with a nice memory of a fine SOTA day. Final count 36 stations, 15 DXCC (2 real DX to NA and SA) a little bit of sunburn ;)

AMSAT Satellite Communications Achievement Award

Na ez is meglett: 543-as sorszámmal megkaptam a szatelliten keresztül 20 országgal való összeköttetésért járó diplomát.
Előre a következő szintre!

6 months on satellite

Well it's been 6 months now that I got my RH-770 antenna for the Wouxun, and tried it on the first satellite pass that day. And to my surprise and great pleasure I made it. Not an entirely successful QSO as I was cut off in the middle of it (it was AO-27 with the annoying habit of shutting off mid-pass) but it did foresight a great satellite experience. And it did...
With ever increasing number of QSOs, full contacts, longer or shorter chats, it's been a wonderful half year. It had some hard works in the afternoon pileups, early wakeup for surely getting in, and working from some extraordinary places to, it never stopped fascinating me.

So where did I get in 6 months?
368 QSOs
worked 33 countries and 79 squares
got confirmation on 20 countries (including YO) and 25 squares

And where I headed now?
well I'm aiming for some of the AMSAT awards, of which I'm very close, and of course to stay at least as much on the birdies.
Sadly the number of QSOs has started to drop, and I foresee this dropping tendency to continue, as AO-51 has a failing health, and being the best satellite and the main one I could use, it's frequent crashing affects me greatly. Of course there are some other FM satellites, but AO-27 and SO-50 are more or less useless because of the extremely high QRM in Brasov where I'm staying during the weekdays, and because the weekend zoo in there largely prohibiting me of getting in with my modest setup when I'm home. And of course there is still SO-67, but is rather scarcely turned on over Europe, and it is also experiencing some problems lately, with some crashes of the firmware, and there is another thing I've experienced lately, having more trouble hearing it steadily and getting in in a constant form, I'm guessing some polarization problem, or maybe the satellite spinning to fast or something, but having some difficulties with the whip.
But hey let's stay optimistic and get going on the next morning pass, I can get on.

YO/MC-033 Activation

After my failed activation last year, it came the time for a successful one Mățău hill near Câmpulung.
Everything began with a visit to Brașov of 3 HAM from Germany (Walter - DK1BN, Hartmut - DF6PW and Chris - DJ7PI) eager to activate some YO summits. It seems that even them noticed the low SOTA activity of YO-land.
Before they came here asked around http://sotawatch.org about summits in the Brașov (Brassó, Kronstadt) area, to which I responded with a description of the closest and easiest summits.
After a few e-mail exchanges we did meet in Brașov for some face-to-face discussions. Afters these they decided on Mățău hill for their first attempt, this being one of the most accessible summits in YO ARM list. Well of course they also decided on this because they did not considered the 80 km to the hill a large distance, not being used to our mountain roads :)
Having this discussions friday at noon, I already finished with work, so I decided to join them in this adventure.
So a two and a half hour long drive followed, it was a little bit late, but the splendor of the Rucăr-Bran pass made up for it...
Unfortunately when we arrived to Câmpulung a terrible rain started seemingly ending our hopes for an activation. As we arrived to Mioarele village, just a couple of hundred meters from the summit we had to wait in the for half an hour because of the rain.
After that though our luck came back as the weather quickly got better and we started our climb to the summit.

After about half an hour the sun was shining and the towers on the hill looked very welcoming 

On the top we quickly started mounting the antenna on a fishing rod, connected the transceiver and Walter, DK1BN started operating CW on the familiar SOTA frequency 10.118 MHz. Almost instantly came a huge pileup, a YO summit bewildering most of the chasers.

We quickly started unpacking the equipment

Of course while extending the antenna we took our moment to admire the panorama unraveled by the leaving clouds

Rised the antenna on a fishing rod, connected the tuner  and the transceiver, took a laptop for the log ...

and Walter started working CW on 30m

Meanwhile I tried my luck with my Wouxun handy with the telescopic antenna. At the first call on 145.500 YO7GQZ from Pitești came back very quick, after that however nobody else was on that frequency, so I switched to the usual calling frequency of the area, 145.225. This time I got more and more responses, so after a while I QSY-d to 145.425 to not block the calling frequency entirely. New station kept responding on this frequency also and of course I took my time during each QSO to explain a little bit about SOTA activity, this on being the among the first ones in the area.

I tried also my luck on WHF with my handy

I made 14 QSOs in total (among wich YO7FBM from Corabia, 170km away, not bad for 5W handheld), unfortunately the batteries started depleting (usual thing for the Wouxun when I talk too much).
I still hope I managed to popularize a little bit what SOTA means, so maybe others will join this wonderful activity.
Our activation lasted about one and a half hour, during wich Walter managed 82 QSOs on the 20, 30 and 40m bands, a few of them YO stations, so another succes we can say.
This was Walter's 150th summit, so he really enjoyed it, the large number of QSOs he made, and of course the spectacular surroundings also. I think this was also his first summit above 1000m, so it must have been a really good day for him.
As the dusk came we started packing our thing so we can get down to the car while there is light. But the wish for other QSOs from other summits...

The sunset is telling us it is time for a last QSO.

I just hope I will have time so I can go out and activate other summits in the near future.
Once again I want to thank all whom I made contact from the summit and of course to DK1BN, DF6PW and DJ7PI for this wonderful opportunity. I wish you guys many successful activations and hope to meet you on some more YO mountains.

Brassói városfal

Itt van egy kép a kedvenc szatellit-vadászó helyemről Brassóban. Fenn a falról egészen jó kilátás van észak-kelettől észak-nyugaton át dél-nyugatig (10-15° eleváció). Sajnos másik irányban a Cenk gyakorlatilag elzár mindent.

Lead free solder

I had a clash again with lead free soldering today, when I had to change a bunch of capacitors in my mainboard. So after about 4 hours of sweating and swearing just for changing 8 capacitors I have to draw a few conclusions:

1. first of all I would like to know whoever did come up with the idea of lead free soldering, I surely would beat the crap out of him – I don't think there is a more insane idea that would give more headache and more pain to a nice guy who just doesn't want to throw away fairly good products containing potentially hazardous materials
2. now let's think it over: lead free solder has some really interesting qualities: it doesn't melt easily, if it does melt eventually it melt only locally and doesn't flow on copper, it cools rapidly and throws whiskers in the process; we can conclude thus that lead free solder is good for anything but soldering, no wonder it is so hard to solder today electronic equipment: you need special ovens to do this and there is always a large number of failures
3. even worse than soldering is the desoldering and resoldering process: it is impossible to mimic the temperature profile of the oves with a simple soldering iron: this means that repairing ROHS equipment in large scale is practically impossible, only really crazy people like me try to repair such things
4. what does happen with all the electronic boards with some simple and easy to repair (or used to be easy) failures: they are simply replaced with a new one and thrown away; on a side note it is interesting that more and more electronics fail prematurely and needs to be replaced (which I think can be at least partially explained by the bad soldering capabilities of lead-free technique)
5. so finally lets see where we got with lead-free solder: we have much more hazardous waste (because electronics do contain a lot of hazardous material besides lead) which is thrown away because it's not feasible to repair – probably much more than we would have if there was still lead in the solder; we are spending much more money on new or replacement equipment and most importantly hobbyists and amateurs are a dying breed because the large headaches lead-free is causing

The only ones winning with this are the large companies producing electronic equipment: why am I not surprised on this.