From Hávamál :

Cattle die, and kinsmen die,
And so one dies one’s self;
But a noble name will never die,
If good renown one gets.

It was a pleasure to meet Alexey and we already talked about his next visit to Otradalur.

VE2XAA de TF4M SK ——————————-

Outside of the contest,  Alexey operated from my station using the call sign TF/VE2XAA.

Our last QSO was on the 14th of May, 2011 on 20m CW.

VE2XAA_20M

Here is an album of photos I took of Alexey during his visit.

VE2XAA @ TF4X

Alexey, VE2XAA piloted TF4X in the IARU HF Contest 2011.

63 Photos

During his stay, Alexey suggested some improvements to my engineering  - I have already begun to implement some of his suggestions.

Alexey had prepared to work the contest on SSB and had recorded his contest exchanges into the voice keyer of the radio.   However, he decided to do a CW only effort.  The recording was discovered by chance recently.

VE2XAA@TF4X_VoiceKeyer

I believe Alexey was very pleased with his visit.   He wrote in my station Guest Book:

…unic place in the planet, unic landscape with real Elves and unic antenna farm. ….In 10-20 years one more forest will cover the place where it was never before.   And on top of the trees the Arctic King with Arctic Quinne will rule their Otradalur Kingdome!

The result of the contest IARU 2011:

total: 1876 QSO, 770400 points,  beside contest 2200 QSO.  Total for 3 days ~ 4000 QSO.

Main station impression:   usually you do not hear the stations calling you.  This problem does not exist in Otradalur farm.   You hear even 160 m band with full daylight days in July!  ”White nights” – is not a problem for Arctic King!

73! Alexey, VE2XAA

Most of Alexey´s TF4X operation was recorded as follows:

VE2XAA@TF4X recording 01

VE2XAA@TF4X recording 01

VE2XAA@TF4X recording 02
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TF3CW operating TF4M with the Arctic King

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YL Andrea and Samúel, TF2SUT

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My wife and I stayed at Millers Bed & Breakfast in the beautiful historic town of Lewes.

I can recommend Millers without hesitation – we had a wonderful stay.

On the last morning of our stay I was allowed to observe how the lady cooked her eggs and the photo shows my first attempt with the method.

The Perfect Egg!

The egg alone was worth the trip to England.

Alexey, VE2XAA with two perfect eggs!

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He made 1876 QSOs for a total score of 770,400 points in the contest.

Alexey became interested in visiting my station after we worked on 160 meters when he was QRV from Zone 2 in last years CQ World Wide Contest.

Propagation was poor due to Aurora and as a result most of the contacts were made on 20m.  

Despite 24 hour daylight, Alexey made 14 QSOs on 160 Meters during the contest.

Before the contest Alexey operated my station as TF/VE2XAA and made another 2,300 QSOs for a total of more than 4,000 QSOs during his stay.

Here are Alexey´s comments on his operation :

First of all I would like to thanks Thor TF4M for a great opportunity to see and use his
Super Station with unique Antenna Farm on the surface of 1500 hectares!
Before the contest I decided to participate in phone category but during first 6 minutes
of the contest was no phone QSO at all! So the mode was switched for CW and run
started on 20 m band – the only opened band at the moment. Time to time I did check
15m and 10m but it was no whisper on the bands. Finally I did a few QSO on 15m with
big troubles but 10 m was close during the contest completely. 20m was surprising: I did
expect that run on 20m will stop after a few hours as usually for my home location; that
will be already no new stations on the band and I can start hunting for multipliers; but
pile-up had no stop! The flat rate of 120-140 QSO was continued after 5, 6, 7…hours
of the run! The stations with High Power, Low Power and QRP had almost the same
signal level! The Otradalur Antenna Farm did a work perfectly and stack-match box
let me separate EU-USA-JA directions just with push on one button! Amazing! In 10
hours I had already more than 1200 QSO only on 20m and did expect to have a good
run on other bands to make same number of QSO for other 14 hours. But after 12 hours
of run somebody on the sky decided to switch off the light, put night Aurora cover on
Iceland and told: OK guys, now you can relax and go to sleep, it will be no propagation
for you for next few hours! It becomes nightmare: all bands closed, only big-guns were
on the bands, QSO rate drops for 10-20 per hour… Nice moment was on 160m: “Arctic
King” antenna was doing the work very well: on each 1 kHz distance I heard HQ or other
powerful stations with S7…S9, but they did not hear my 1 kW signal! Probably they
had other receiving directions except Arctic. With big difficulties spending 2-3 minutes
for each contact I was able to make a dozen QSO on 160m despite 24 hour day-light at
Island! Thor TF4M did not very good antenna, but exceptionally perfect!
Thanks to every one for the contacts and hope to see you in the other contests.
73! de Alexey VE2XAA

The local hot pool.

Birta – Magyar Vizsla with VE2XAA

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