YU/CS-023 Vis

Vis - YU/CS-023 - 920 m 4 points

The place where I live, Belgrade, at 100 m asl, is far away from the mountains. There is a couple of SOTA summits around, but there are almost no real mountains within 100 km driving distance.

The closest mountain higher than 1000 m is Mt. Rudnik, 100 km south. Rudnik dominates this part of Central Serbia (Šumadija region) The highest peak is Veliki Šturac, YU/CS-016, 1132 m, my closest 6 pointer by far. My aim was to start activating SOTA peaks in Mt. Rudnik area.

Approaching Mt. Rudnik

Early in the morning of Saturday May 3. I took off to Mt. Rudnik. The first summit to activate was a 4 pointerVis YU/CS-023, 920 m, just south from YU/CS-016. This summit is very inconspicuous, not visited by local mountaineering and hiking groups.

I drove to village Majdan, and from there some 7 km more on dirt roads. At 9:45 in the morning I left my car near the col between YU/CS-016 and YU/CS-023, at 720 m, and went by foot uphill, following a former logging path. 30 minutes later I was at the top. 

Vis YU/CS-023 seen from the col

Old logging path

Young trees near the summit.
Thin trees and rock heaps indicate that this flat area is an abandoned cultivated land

At the summit.
Only at the summit I realized that there is an old abandoned road (or path) going all the way to the summit.

Things slowed down then, since setting the was not easy at all. I attached one end of my 2 x 10 m doublet to a tree limb, but anchoring all alone the supporting 8 m fishing rod vertical was very difficult. The thin wire kept getting tangled, the fishing rod falling, all in the edge of a stinging nettle field. Finally, after more than an hour, the antenna was finally operational. 

The antenna is finally operational

First qsos were on 40 meters - S2S with HA4FY/P on HA/KM-021, and 4 more qsos with OE, HA, S5, OM. Nobody answered my calls after that - it seems that low doublet is not efficient on 40 m. I moved to 10 MHz and thing started going there. I logged 20 chasers in the next 20 minutes, and when there were no more callers, I moved to 14 MHz. It was a bit difficult to tune the antenna, and after that it was difficult to find chasers. Only 9 more qsos were made during 30 minutes. I started to develop problem with my keyer, in random moments it was becoming stuck for a couple of seconds keying only dashes or dots. I suspected that the problem is a short in the 3.5 mm jack, but there was no visible short after disassembling the jack.  At the end, I inadvertently started cq-ing on 14.062, convinced that the frequency is clear, but it turned out that somebody else was there already. In the first moment I believed HB9DAX and G4SSH were coming back to my call, and it took me some time to realize that they are answering somebody else's cq. Sorry!

I had to descend back to my car to run to the next summit planned for the day. Only when all was packed I realized that in all the hurry I forgot to take any photo of my operating position.

A couple of hours later, I had a proper view of YU/CS-023,
from Srednji Šturac, one of the side summits of Veliki Šturac YU/CS-016.

Equipment:

• MTR V2 Rig (powered by 12 V slab giving almost 5 Watts)
• 2 x 10.5 m inv. V doublet antenna fed with 10 m long 300 ohm twin lead,
• ZM4 clone tuner
• 8 m long fishing rod supporting the antenna center

S2S:

HA4FY/P HA/KM-021