During our summer vacation 2022 my YL & me where heading from Berlin once more to the south, this time in a camper van. We had no final destination, but it was more of a round trip.
After some stops in Germany we arrived in Italy, first stopping in Cervia at the Adriatic coast. My YL isn’t too excited about my radio hobby, which is quite honestly and unfortunately an understatement. She agreed anyway, that I could take a small radio equipment with me, just in case we would make it to any location “by random”, from which I would love to TX.
A real coincidence was, that I learned Cervia was close to the hometown of 1AT010 Roberto & 1AT011 Diana. Once in contact we got invited to their home and had a beautiful evening with a delicious BBQ. Further AT friends (1AT425 Gian Luca & his YL 1AT2424 Liliana) and family member joined and I am thankful for having had this opportunity.
Shortly afterwards, I managed to convince my wife to camp in San Marino for a few days over a weekend and I had to confess that I wanted to radio from there. She was not enthusiastic but agreed.
Our location in San Marino was the beautiful campsite “Centro Vacanze San Marino” (locator JN63FX) located on a slope with an open view to the east, a restricted position in the direction of the northwest and southeast, and a rather unfavourable position in the direction of the west.
Although Gian Luca had gifted to me a quad loop, there was no way to raise it and I had to stick with my T2LT on a 8m fishing rod. To gain some more height, I positioned the mast on the bike rack of the camper. A small table with a switching powers supply and my FT891 made up the shack.
eSkip was favourable and allowed to log 169 stations on the first afternoon, mostly from EU, but also a few from Brazil, Canary island, Madeira & Puerto Rico. Mentionable had been contacts as close as 420km to Liechtenstein and the very southern part of Germany (Hi 13AT015 Joe ;-)).
Another 170 stations made it into the log the next day, when I was on air several times “en bloc” in the early morning, afternoon and again late evening. In between we enjoyed the pool and other amenities, but also made a trip to San Marino City.
The third day was disappointing from a radio viewpoint. Just a couple of contacts around noon were added to the log. The remaining time of the day was spent differently, again in San Marino City and at the pool. Despite being able to see the Adriatic sea from our campsite, the weather conditions up the hill could not compare to that at the coast. No breeze at all, pure sunshine and temperatures way far too high and not what I feel comfortable at anymore.
Finally on day 4 we decided to stay at the pool and in the shadow and relax. Before we arrived in San Marino I came up with the idea to send out 36 QSL cards directly from San Marino, but I had no cards at hand of course. Thanks to 1AT070 Simon, who instantly helped and organised the design, an overnight print and express delivery to the campsite I received the package at the reception just in time. Propagation was low most of the day. While writing the QSL I called every now and then, but not very successfully. Thanks to some skeds 91 and 153 division managed to get into the log, but 69 QSOs within 7 hours was a bit of agony. We had reserved a table at the local restaurant at 7 pm and I was almost about to go QRT at around 5 pm. However I had a gut feeling that something was going to happen and it happened. All out of sudden eSkip started with much intensity. The curiosity in this situation was, that somehow a kind backscatter stepped in, allowing to log countless S9++ QSO with stations as close as for example La Spezia, just 200km airline away from San Marino and “behind” the Appenines. You might imagine that the pile up was immense, as many Italians very much sought a QSO with San Marino being located in the dead zone of many. After 1,5 hours and 89 further stations in the log – the crazy eSkip wasn’t over yet – I had to go QRT, otherwise I would have been grilled by my YL’s deadly stare.
The next day we stopped at the post office in Serravalle to drop off all direct QSL. The ladies had to gather all kinds of stamps to get enough for all the letters. I helped with the pasting, also because I wanted to make sure that everything was “tutti”. As far as I got it, 99% of the cards arrived, which was surprisingly good taking into account that beautiful stamps of San Marino adorned the envelopes.
Afterwards we visited 1AT543 Domenico in his restaurant on the beach of Rimini, before we went on towards “Lago d’Iseo”. Domenico was a great host and with his mother as the chef in the kitchen, the food was just great.
Sadly shortly before our stay in San Marino old guard Guido, 36AT102 went silent key and so I dedicated my activity to him. 513 QSO into 42 DXCC on 5 continents was the final result.
13AT031, Martins Blog 