RSGB IOTA from Herøy

I recently spent three weeks in Herøy, Norway, combining the family’s summer vacation with a little participation in the RSGB IOTA contest. I was active as LC1R from a small island named Øksningan in IOTA EU-062.

I had to work barefoot this time, as my PA needed a bit of TLC, and to top it all there were challenging working conditions, so I only landed a modest 161 QSOs. There were still many vacation days left, and outside contests I worked a few hundred more on SSB and FT8 with my primary callsign, LB5SH.

Oh, and I also participated in the RSGB FT4 contest, and tried my best in the Russian WW MM, but they were merely “bonus contests” and the effort was low, relaxed.

The antenna of choice this time was an EFHW, gracefully lended to me by my friend LB6VI Sanimir. As a ground reference I simply hooked it to a cow fence (not the shocking type) and that worked surprisingly well. When the conditions were up I was able to work the entire world on FT8, all the way from west coast USA to Australia. Not half bad for a string of wire stuck to some random farmer’s fence.