Spring day ham radio activation in Hiastinlahti, Finland

Hiastinlahti is a bay where river Iijoki flows into Bothnian Bay, the northernmost part of Gulf of Bothnia. This area is a Nature 2000 nature reserve area and good spot for bird watching. The area has a two kilometer long nature trail with fireplace, lean-to and toilet. From the lean-to there’s another nature trail leading to a bird watching tower. This place might be quite popular during bird migration season.

This is my second time taking my amateur radio station here. I didn’t complete a full WWFF activation with 44 contacts the first time so this trip was motivated by both visiting this beautiful place again and finishing the activation.

The trail was in dangerous condition to walk on. There was layer of snow on top of wooden planks. The snow was melting on top of those planks forming really slippery chunks which might contribute to falling badly. Outside the hard packed trail the snow was not packed at all and was on places knee deep and hard to walk on. So I walked on the river bank where warmness of the sun and cold nights had produced hard packed surface. I was being careful to stay above the water level on the bank to keep myself dry.

The snow and ice on top of wood planks is a hazard to avoid during spring. Chunk of ice could be really slippery on wet wooden plank leading to falling.

This river bank was a pleasure to walk.

Station setup was a breeze. There was some kind of pole construction maybe meant for observation spot for some big bird. It was currently not in use so I borrowed it to keep my telescopic fishing pole up. No bird came up to complain so maybe it was fair.

I had total of 43 contacts. Six were kept on 17m FT8 and rest on SSB. First 24 contacts to Finnish stations on 40m band followed by 3 contacts on Finland in 80m band. 80m was really dead. Juha, OH8CW chimed in on the frequency to mention there might be some aurora borealis affecting the band.

80m and 40m bands are usually where I get the local Finnish contacts. Probably due to Near Vertical Incident Skywave (NVIS) propagation? But 20m is usually where European wide contacts are made and today was no exception: Poland, Italy, France, Slovakia and Germany were contacted in just about five minutes.

17m FT8 contacts were in Europe as well: Germany, Czech and Slovenia. And I ran out of battery from my laptop. The cold weather with really old battery is not a good field deployable solution.

After finishing the activation I walked to the bird watching tower to see two swans leaving. No other birds were visible. It is still too early of spring due to bay and sea still being frozen.

Operation details

 * Date: 2023–04–21
 * Time on air: 14:15—16:00 UTC (local time 17:15—19:00, UTC+0300)
 * Callsign on air: OH8HUB/P (op. Ossi)
 * Maidenhead grid: KP25PI
 * WWFF ref: OHFF-0640, "Hiastinlahti"
 * POTA ref: OH-0168, "Hiastinlahti Natura 2000"

A proof to WWFF log checker I was there.