Start: 04-09-2022 End: 11-09-2022 IOTA: EU001, Island: Karpathos
For years, I occasionally search for a suitable location in SV5 for partly holidays and partly a radio operation. The biggest problem with hotels is that they will not allow you to install even simple antenna’s. Not long ago I came across a Dutch web site that was also promoting a couple of homes for rent on Karpathos Island, part of Dodecanese SV5. One of them immediately draw my attention, as it was located on a rock close to the sea and there were no direct neighbors.
I contacted the owner and soon my requested dates were confirmed. The plan was I would go only with my wife but since the house was big and could easily accommodate more people, also my daughter and grant daughter joint us as well.
There were a couple of weeks left for preparation. Based on the pictures of the house and the location, I decided to bring my DX Commander as I could easily place it in the garden. For the rest it was the SunSDR2DX and Expert 1.3K-FA linear amplifier.
After a three-our flight from Amsterdam and 15 minutes taxi drive we arrived on the “rock”. We had a very beautiful house, with internet connections, air conditioning, well equipped and with sufficient space around. Shortly after arrival we first had to buy food supplies, but most important, drinking water. Soon we learned that carrying these many kilo’s up the hill was terrible. That was the moment we directly hired a small car.
Later in the afternoon I assembled the DX Commander antenna and placed it in the garden, in front of the house. Once the equipment was installed, I made my first contact with JA1TBA on 40m. Over the next days I experienced that I had good and long openings to Asia, in particular Japan.
That SV5 is not so rare was obvious so I had to do a lot of CQing. Practically all QSOs were made without using split. I was a bit surprised about high number of dupes: 120 (3.61 %). My last QSO was on 11 September at 05:37 UTC. In total I made 3321 QSO’s.
I experienced some issues with fluctuating SWR on 10 and 12 meters and I was unable to trace the cause of this. On 40 meters however I had an SWR of 1.0!
Immediately after that, I started to dismantle the station and took the antenna down for dismantling. That was during the day and temperature was very and high humidity. Even for the local people it was a very hot day. So even dismantling the antenna is easy work, it costed me a lot of sweat.
During dismantling the antenna I discovered that the 40m radiator wire was damaged where the hose clamp was on the last (top) section. The clamp was black from sparks and the wire lost it insulation and half of the copper stands were burned away. The 17m radiator had the isolation burned at the place where it went through the lowest spreader. That was even more strange as there were no metal parts. Obviously I will investigate what could have been the cause of these problems and need improvements to avoid similar issues in the future.
If you are interested to also operate from this location, have a look on this web site which has also the contact information.