November 30, 2013.

The day was wonderful, sunny and only few degree below zero Celsius without any snow on ground at all.The trees and shrubbery were frosted a bit so the sights around were just beautiful. On the way to the territory I made a phone call to the only local HAM there - Vilnis YL2BJ and invited him to come and look at the operation and make some contacts too. He agreed to participate. Then I arrived on the planned operation site, which is next to the Ruja fish ponds, which was one of the biggest, if not biggest at all fish farm in former Latvian SSR at those times. The territory is huge, the dams looks intact, but the former ponds are dry and mostly filled with shrubbery. Only part of this farm is still working in nowadays.

When I reached the planned operation site it was absolutely clear that the operation from there is impossible. Higher and lower power lines were all across and the higher power lines where chirping like a swarm of sparrows in those absolutely silent weather conditions. After a short photosession at informational desks I moved further ahead inside the "jungles" of shrubbery. The place I found was far from ideal, but anyway I put up my antenna and operational site. Meantime Vilnis arrived at the position and helped me to put up the antenna at place. As the tallest trees were birches, the highest point of antenna was about 15m over ground but lowest only 3-4m . After Installation we finally started to work on air. The first minutes were disappointing - just a few QSOs. Then somebody spotted us on the net and the usual "pileup" started. As this time my power supply for laptop from 12V was still under repair, I decided to work in "old fashioned" style and used the handwritten log and keyer and left my laptop at home. But I did not took in account 2 circumstances tied with this. First, that my keyer had a tendence to stuck time by time, and the temperature below zero, which made my ink pen stiffen, so only pushing hard on it it was possible to log the contacts. I had not any pencil with me of course.... Time was getting colder as the sun was slowly going down to horizon and we decided to move the rigs into my car, after what Vilnis went home and left me alone. Now inside the car it was much more comfortable to operate and pen was working as it should. So I worked from the car untill about half past five local time, followed the sun as it went completely down to horizon and a bright coming up of Venus very close to each other. It was completely dark outside and the dismantling of antenna I had to do with a help of flashlight. 

All in all 288 QSOs were made with 33 DXCC countries including 4 USA and 2 Canadian stations as most distant. It was no Japanese stations worked this time.