EX/OH70 - expedition to Issyk Kul, Kyrgyzstan, 2023.Nov.17-20
Pre-history
I have been waiting for my temporary call sign EX/OH70 for more than three months. But after getting it (tnx to EX7DY and colleagues), I immediately grabbed my wife, jumped to the car, and drove to Issyk Kul’s southern shore. There was a yurt camp Bel Tam that I visited earlier a couple of time and loved the place a lot. But this time I wanted to come with my antennas and transceivers.
XYL
Route
Issyk Kul is in Kyrgyzstan and is very close to Almaty, Kazakhstan, where I live now if you could fly or drive directly, for example. However, there is a mountain range in between. Thus, instead of a quick 100-150 km drive, there is a 470 km travel with the border in between. Overall, it takes about 9 hours point-to-point, including the time for the border crossing. A half of the route is a decent highway. But the other half has little or no lighting, road marking, or asphalt. Be careful when driving.
Overall driving to and back was OK. Though, it could be easier and faster if roads were better lit and marked.
The border crossing was relatively fast this time. It took about one hour in one direction.
Location and grid
Grid: MN82me
We lived in the yurt camp Bel Tam – wonderful hosts, many international visitors – highly recommended.
They have two camps, actually. One is about 150 meters from the short. Another is directly on the shore. But they closed it since it was a low season already. There was nobody living. However, I specifically traveled to this point and wanted to put the ham shack in the same yurt I lived in two years ago. Hosts were very kind and allowed me to occupy the yurt Paris 🙂 – “my yurt” from the past. The view from my place was spectacular.
Rig and antennas
– Moxon for the 15-meter band – about 8 meters above the ground
– 1/4 verticals for 10/15/20-meter bands – combined as a single antenna – with resonance radials
We were lucky with the weather. It was sunny mostly and not very windy.
Though, just before a couple of hours of us leaving the place, the wind changed the direction and became stronger, and my 15-meter band Moxon collapsed. Luckily, no serious damage to anyone or anything.
Propagation was very good to the west, north, and northeast, and I had many QSOs. However, the east and south were really closed, probably by the mountains. For example, I had very limited connectivity to Japan, no connection to China, and very limited to India.
I discovered Moxon antennas for myself just a couple of weeks prior to the expedition. Before, I tried Moxon for the 10-meter band only. I loved them! 1-1.5 levels on the S-meter for reception and very similar for transmission. Very good indeed.
Of course, I built another Moxon for the 15-meter band and was eager to test it for the first time right in the field.
The Moxon for 15-meter band turned out to be good and effective, as well as its 10-meter band sibling. Though mechanically, it was substantially heavier and fell a couple of times from the top of the mast. The telescoping mast experienced an “unplanned reduction in height” – if I put in SpaceX’s wording.
Kyrgyz people were nice to us and hospitable. The yurt what I used as my shack was about to be dismantle for the winter, but they let me finish the expedition and starting dismantling the top cover right after I finished.
Yurt without the top cover next to my ham shack.
I love Moxon. But for the expedition, particularly when you have the electricity grid, a decent 1-1.5kW power amplifier would be a very good item.
The place and time were perfect. But the company will suffer if I hide away for too long. Thus, it was a time drive back. I packed all the antennas and headed to Almaty.
I love the expeditions:
- 600+ QSOs
- 40 countries
- Spent half of the time playing with antennas
- Even more experience with Moxons
- A lot of ideas for new places and setups
73 SK
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