30th December of 2013.

       As it was the very end of the year and I had a lot of free days from my job with nothing special to do, I decided to activate some of the newly added areas. After look at the map my chioce was 3 areas around Gaujiena, about 40 minutes to go from my QTH, all marshes. That was planned. Weather conditions were fine for such activities, but the lenght of winter day unfortunately is short. Started early, just after 8AM local time, at 9 I was in Gaujiena driving through Estonia. During this I found a place for activation of one area - Lepuru purvs YLFF-259. After short stumble I found the correct forrest road to the area and was looking for a place to work from. Situation was not encouraging - I had to transport all the equipment on my own more than 300m to be in area. So I did. It was rainy time by time and windy too, so I had to make a shelter for equipment to keep it dry. The area itself was quite wild - next to the big marsh on the border with Estonia. As it is known, there are more than just a few brown bears in Estonia. And this was the right place for them to feel good themselves. And there was just a "nice" metal cage with drop-down doors to trap some kind of animal right under my antenna. I am not a hunter, but surely that was not left there for bunnies. In shrub thicket somebody broke the tree branches about 3,5 to 4 meters above the ground level......

       I put up my station at the foot of the game tower. Pushed up one end of antenna on the spruce-top and went to the car to bring transceiver and laptop to site. Came back and saw the antenna balun is down on ground. The spruce-top broke down and antenna went down for about 3 meters. Somehow I fixed it there and finally started to operate. After being on air for some time I realized that the antenna height is much too low to operate normally. Even more - with a battery my transceiver was giving out 60W as a maximum into this low hanging antenna. I had to spend almost half an hour to get to the car, walk back with fishing rod and put my antenna back on higher position where it's efficiency was much better. I continued to run, but turnout was low. Possibly the reason was my low power. I decided to leave this area to activate another one today. Finally 176 QSOs were made.

         Packed all into car and went to Sloku purvs - YLFF-287. Just about 10km from my current position. Found the place to work from, fixed it on GPS and made a photos. Then started to work on antenna. Unfortunately that was all I did. One of my sinks broke on the fly and I lost it, anothe stucked on the top of pine tree and left it there. And then I could not find where the sink will land, because of dusk. So I left it all and went back to home. But now I know where exactly to go to do those areas!