YO SOTA Marathon 2015 – the story IV

This article is a sequel to YO SOTA Marathon 2015 – the story III.

 Day 5

The night we spent at 2500m altitude was a true mountain experience – 11 people packed in one small room, and most of us didn’t get enough sleep. At 06:00 we were already ready to go – mostly out of boredom since we couldn’t sleep anymore anyway. Some of us (YO9IRF, YO6PSX, YO2BP, YO6PIB, HB9DST, YO9IPF) decided to go and activate YO/MC-008 Costila (10p) and the rest (YO2MSB, YO8SEP, PB2T, K2XYL) went ahead to Babele and took the cable car to Busteni, from where they drove to YO/EC-011 Postavaru (8p).

The hike to YO/MC-008 is a short one – about one hour, but there are some steeper parts where you need to pay a bit of attention, and we needed to come back to YO/MC-006 in order to get to Babele and then to our cars in Pestera. Heading out there that early in the morning was a bit of a gamble, since we are 3 hours ahead of GMT the chances were the rest of Europe (and our chasers) weren’t awake yet, but the weather forecast didn’t look good for the day and we had a long hike and drive ahead of us so we had to get going.

Finallly, when we arrive at the summit it starts to rain – cold, depressing, 2500m altitude rain. Paul HB9DST installed his 30m CW lightweight setup and Casaba was giving 20m SSB a try.

As expected, none of the two HF activators really had too much luck, Paul got just one QSO and Csaba got two. Luckily, the other team was still in range on YO/MC-006 and we got our 4 needed contacts each with them (also S2S !) via 2m, plus I managed to find YO5PQV/P on 2m who was in a touristic camping nearby. Of course, with our luck, as soon as we finished the activation the rain stopped, but the other team relayed some info from the guys at the Omu Weather Station on YO/MC-006 that it will rain again later in the day, so we had to hurry – we had a 4+h hike to Babele and then a 2-3h drive to the next summits.

At Babele we stopped a bit to regroup, and Paul took the chance to have his picture taken next to the Carpathian Sphinx.

From this point on we had to change the original plans: since we were coming down on the other side of the Babele plateau (our cars were there) we didn’t have enough time to catch the cable car for YO/EC-011. We had the option to activate the 8-point YO/EC-086 Vanturisul wich was easily accessible from our route, but that meant we couldn’t catch DJ713 open between 12:00-12:30 so we had to loose another few hours for the detour. So while the other team went ahead and activated YO/EC-011 and YO/EC-331, we decided for Fitifoiul YO/EC-241 (6p) and Piatra Arsa YO/EC-252 (6p), two easy summits that I already activated this year. Unfortunately, at this point Silviu YO6PSX had to part ways since he had a previous work engagement for the weekend.

After some waiting in the Prahova Valley’s infamous traffic, we got to the second summit of the day, YO/EC-241. The plan was to set up 3 stations on the summit: 30m CW, 20m SSB and 10m SSB, and as soon as we started setting up Florin YO9IPF realised the power cable was missing for his Yaesu FT-817 – the radio for the 20m SSB setup. Luckily this was a very easy summit and in less than 25 minutes he managed to go back to the car, get the cable and come back. In the meantime I got the spare internal FNB-85 battery from Csaba and powered the 20m SSB on 2.5W, and started hunting for S2S contacts. I managed to get 6 S2S contacts with 3 different summits on both 20m and 10m before Florin came back, then I left him and Petronel to activate the summit on 20m.

While we were busy with getting the 20m SSB station on the air, Csaba YO6PIB was trying his best at 10m SSB. Once again 10m disappointed, he only managed to get 3 contacts, 2 of them being S2S with the other team on YO/EC-011.

Last summit for the day was YO/EC-252, and we only went with 30m CW and 20m SSB for this one; of course, we always used 2m FM both for keeping in touch with eachother and for local QSOs, but I didn’t feel the need to mention that everytime. We had some problems spotting so I wandered a bit away from the summit to find better GSM signal for spotting to work, and also have my chaser contact with the guys still on the summit :).

In the meantime the other team did a good job on YO/EC-011 and YO/EC-331, we had a few S2S with them via FM and we agreed to meet at the Himalaya camp. The camp is a heaven for the outdoors afficionado, rafting, mountain climbing, horseback riding or archery being just a few of the activities you can learn and practice here.

This was Friday evening and (except Silviu YO6PSX) the whole team was present, so we had to have a proper celebratory dinner. Petrica YO9RIJ, vice-president of EURAO and representative of the Romanian Radio Club association (ARR) joined us and offered the two fresh mountain goats YO2BP and YO6PIB honorary flags that recognise they achievements. Traditional spicy barbequed sausages (courtesy of Petrica), various wine sortiments and heated talks among friends kept us awake well into the night.

For the last day, the plan was to join Paul HB9DST, Zoli YO2BP, Csaba YO6PIB, Petronel YO8SEP and Florin YO9IPF and activate YO/EC-011 and YO/EC-331, while Margreet K2XYL, Hans PB2T, Sorin YO2MSB and Adrian YO6HDF would go on and activate the summits we did the day before. As I was feeling a bit tired after the previous night (=hungover) and had to drive 200km back home the same day, I decided to postone those summits for the winter bonus season and get some more rest.

The rest of the guys went on to YO/EC-011 Postavaru (8p) first:

After this summit, Petronel YO8SEP had to part ways with the rest of the team as he had a bus to catch and a long way home, and Florin YO9IPF offered to drop him off, leaving the activation of YO/EC-331 in the hands of Paul HB9DST, Zoli YO2BP and Csaba YO6PIB. Back at the Himalaya camp, I chased their activations and thanks to Sorin YO2MSB I managed to fill in a summit that was missing from my chaser log, YO/EC-241 – the last QSO from the YO SOTA Marathon 2015. Later that day it was my turn to say goodbye to everybody and leave for Bucharest, tired but happy, soul filled with wonderful memories and a wish to have an even bigger and better one next year.

We managed 998 activator points, about 1100 QSOs and we activated 14 summits from Romania – including 2 virgin ones, in the span of a week. I didn’t even count the S2S or chaser points, and we decided not to take part in the current 10m/6m challenge – this many activators also chasing echother from different nearby summits would’ve been disruptive for everybody else enjoying the competition. We set out to have fun and enjoy the summits and that’s what we did, so I consider YO SOTA Marathon 2015 to be a great success.

It took me more than a month to put the story together and it may be that some of the details have been left out – unintentionally, of course. If you took part in the YO SOTA Marathon 2015 – either as an activator, chaser or just a friend that supported us in any way, I give you my personal thanks and please, feel free to fill in any details I might have missed by using the comments section.

Some pictures used in this blog post were provided by HB9DST Paul, PB2T Hans and YO6PSX Silviu. Thank you !