• OH10X IOTA “Ice DXpedition” to Inakari Island Logs More Than 8,000 Contacts

    From ARRL de WD1CKS@VERT/WLARB to QST on Thu Mar 21 00:34:26 2019
    03/20/2019

    A new Islands On The Air (IOTA[1]) island - Inakari Island (EU192) - was activated for the first time in February by a small international team. Kataja/Inakari Island was added to the official IOTA list last fall.

    Martti Laine, OH2BH; Nigel Cawthorne, G3TXF; Niko Halminen, OH2GEK, and Gerben Menting, PG5M, traveled by snowmobile over the frozen surface of Bothnian Bay and set up camp in an abandoned fisherman's refuge. The team ran two stations simultaneously on 80, 40, 30, 20, 17, and 15 meters, CW and SSB.

    When all was said and done on February 11, the team reported logging 8,088 contacts.

    The weather conditions iced up the 80-meter antenna, causing the resonant frequency to drop some 100 kHz. Guy wires and fiber support poles also were covered with a layer of ice and snow, which required using hot water to collapse them and return them to the carrying cases.


    [1] https://www.iota-world.org/

    ---
    Synchronet Whiskey Lover's Amateur Radio BBS