EA8/LA3ZA April 2023

This was a fun holiday operation from the island of Tenerife with 2.5 - 4 Watts running digital modes, mostly FT8 and some FT4 using a low-band and a high-band QDX.

The best bands were 30 m (29%) and in particular 10 m (65%) with a lot of contacts across the Atlantic ocean as the picture shows. In total 62 different entities/countries were contacted. 

QSL via Logbook of the World.

SV8/LA3ZA part 2

Below is a map showing contacts made from Pythagorio, Samos, early June 2022 using FT8. I tried to contact as many entities (~countries) as possible and got to a total of 55. The main band was 30 m, secondarily 20 m. 40 m and 17 m were also used. 

My quarter-wave antenna @ 30m, shown to the left in the image, performed well, despite the high noise level from the adjacent high-voltage line. The image is in the direction of Turkey (South-East), which is not visible at the time of the image.

SV8/LA3ZA

The polymath Pythagoras was born on
Samos and his birthplace village is now
called Pythagorio.

For a short while I’m operating from Samos, Greece with my old K2 at 10 W output. Noise level here next to a high voltage line is S9+ on all bands except 6m, so only digital modes work. The K2's noise blanker does a good job of removing some of the noise.

The antenna is a quarter-wave vertical for 30 m which also tunes several other bands. It’s on the balcony with a 7 m Sotabeam glass fiber mast, on the left-hand side of the street in the image below.