Nice, sunny weather, mild -6C and no wind. Perfect weather to activation. My wife and I went with skies to Pihlajavesi nature protected area, OHFF-0205. Pihlajavesi have thousands of islands and it just a small part of great lake area Saimaa. We skied about 3 kilometers over ice to small islet near Snake Island. I had old army skies and plastic sled. All radio stuff was packed on the sled. Nowdays I can ski just slow speed but no problem, every step is forward.

Islet was just one big rock middle of lake. So I have to drill with knife a hole to ice. I put fishing pole bottom to hole and supported mast with my ski. Old trick here in OH. 20M/40m linked dipole was in use and old, trusted FT-897 kick 30W SSB. On 40m I got 44 QSOs and on 20m 40 QSOs. All this in one hour. After QSOs we enjoy coffee from thermosbottle and eat some sandwiches sitting on stones. It was so quiet. Next step was dismantle station and pack it again to sled. With slow tempo we skied back to startpoint. We still live in winter time here in the North so daylight time is short. As we arrived to the car the sun was gone down and it rapidly cooled to -10C. At home we warmed up with a sauna – of course.

73 44 Timo OH7JHA