A quick visit to Vaajasalo island
Vaajasalo is a small island in lake Kallavesi in eastern Finland with population less than hundred. There’s also a winery called Alahovi Berry Wine Farm. They produce berry wines, cider, beer and liqueur. The temptation to visit them was huge, but I was on tight schedule. Maybe next time?
The island is accessible by ferry (I missed this fact on my research) or there might be ice road available during winter. The southern part of the island has a one square kilometer private nature reserve area which was my target to be activated.
The ferry to Vaajasalo works on demand. When I arrived to shore the ferry immediately departed empty from the other side and headed my way to pick me up. Then when I drove onto the ferry it departed immediately to drop me to the other side. How convenient. I also took note of the designated times of ferry operator’s breaks (20 minutes break every three hours it seems). No point wasting potential operating time on air waiting for operator to finish their sandwich and well earned cup of hot coffee.
My plan was to operate from the car and I was able to find a good wide spot to park my car from near western border of the nature reserve. The ground and surrounding forest was really wet due to heavy raining for few days. So I took the easy route and hung up my wire antenna to trees next to the road and elevated the wire with seven meter telescopic fishing pole from center of the wire.
After antenna was up I finished setting up the station inside the car and did my usual band checks. Icom IC-705’s SWR meter is awesome for this. While doing my checks I noticed 7.066 MHz had some Finnish activity. They were wrapping up their discussion. I called with my meager 10W of power and Pasi, OH2KAD chimed in. He offered to spot me on cluster on this frequency which I cladly agreed and soon enough I had logged 15 contacts including one park-to-park with Pasi, OH1MM/P to OHFF-0783.
After 40m band was dried out I self-spotted myself to 80m band and kept calling for maybe 10 minutes without hearning anything. That band was dead silent. Up next was 20m band with quick six contacts to Europe.
All in all, the band conditions were really poor and my total count of contacts is only 21 leaving me missing 23 contacts from valid WWFF activation. I ran out of time so it was time to pack my gear and head back to mainland.
Operation details
* Date: 2023–07–29
* Time on air: 10:50—12:00 UTC (local time 13:50—15:00, UTC+0300)
* Callsign on air: OH8HUB/P (op. Ossi)
* Maidenhead grid: KP32VV
* WWFF ref: OHFF-0350, "Vaajasalon metsä"
