UB3BIJ journal · special report · LO06EH
The full, honest, slightly unhinged report of my first radio expedition. Written from under a blanket, three days later, with snacks. Cucumber Day was lovely. Everything else was not.
log entry 01 · saturday, dawn
You saw the plan. The plan was gorgeous. Two antennas, five watts, a field, a festival, me. I had rehearsed it in my head so many times it had a soundtrack.
And I did not pack lightly, because I have never done anything lightly in my life. I packed like a woman preparing to personally re-establish contact with the Mir space station:
Bags. Plural. Backpacks with their own gravitational fields. I hauled it all into the most gorgeous glamping tent you have ever seen — the civilised kind, the kind that costs real money per night and has linen. I was going to be the most glamorous radio operator in the entire Vladimir region. I put my key on the little wooden nightstand like a crown jewel.
Remember that nightstand. It is the last calm image in this story.
log entry 02 · the good part
Let the record show: Cucumber Day delivered. The festival was everything I hoped — the old wooden churches, the crafts, the songs, an entire town sincerely celebrating a vegetable, pickles in forms science has not yet named. A thousand-year-old town throwing a party for a cucumber is the best thing this country does and I will not be argued with.
I ate everything. I bought things I did not need. I was, for several hours, completely happy in a way only a person who does not yet know what the evening holds can be happy.
I want to be very clear that the cucumbers are innocent. Everything that happened next was strictly between me, the laws of physics, and roughly one hundred metres of wire.
log entry 03 · and then
I got back to camp glowing. I strung the EFHW. I checked it.
The numbers were wrong. Not "hmm, slightly off" wrong — slot machine that hates you personally wrong. Fine!! Science!! I have a second antenna for exactly this reason!! I strung the dipole.
The dipole looked at the EFHW's numbers and said hold my balun.
What followed was four hours I am not proud of. I wrapped that beautiful, civilised glamping site in wire like a spider having a personal crisis. Wire on the tent. Wire in the trees. Wire in places wire has no business being. The neighbours were very polite about it, which somehow made everything worse.
I re-strung. I re-measured. I raised the feedpoint, lowered the feedpoint, walked the whole wire like a tightrope inspector. I tried everything I knew, and then — this is the important part — I tried everything I didn't know.
And then I got out the knife.
Somewhere there is a version of me who calmly recalculates wire length with cold trigonometric dignity. The version of me actually present in that field at 21:40 was cutting antennas freehand, by feel, crying, on the theory that if I just made it a little shorter... and a little shorter... and a little—
Nobody heard me. I need you to understand the completeness of it. Not "weak report". Not "QSB, try again". Nothing. I called CW into the band. I called voice into the band. The band did not know I existed. Two days, five watts, a field with a perfect take-off in every direction — and from the world's side: silence, of a purity I have never achieved in any other area of my life.
And the SWR was a horror film, and I kept keying anyway, and somewhere in there — I don't know when, I don't want to know when — I think I may have cooked the output stage. I say "may have" because I have not had the courage to check. The uSDX and I are currently not speaking.
CQ CQ CQ DE UB3BIJ UB3BIJ UB3BIJ K . . . — — — (nothing)
Because here is the confession, the real one: at the very end, when I knew — knew — the antenna wasn't an antenna anymore, I sat on the grass in the dark and kept calling anyway. CQ, CQ, CQ, into a wire that went nowhere, on a rig that may already have been dying under my hand. Not because I thought anyone would answer.
Because sending felt less like breaking
than stopping did.
log entry 04 · sunday night
There is no cute way to tell this part, so I will just tell it.
I did not pack up my station. Packing up is a thing done by a person, and by Sunday night there was no person available. There was a woman-shaped absence standing in a beautiful tent she could no longer afford emotionally, surrounded by wire clippings and open cases and things that had refused, for two days, to do the one thing they were built to do.
So I took garbage bags — big black ones — and I swept my whole beautiful hobby into them. Transceiver, amplifier, cut wire, the key, the tools that were left. No foam cutouts. No cable ties. No little labels. Everything I love, in bin bags, thrown in the boot of the car like evidence.
Roll call of what came home, versus what stayed in that grass forever:
Somewhere around a very civilised glamping site near Suzdal, half of my expensive tools are starting a new life in the grass without me. I hope they are happy. I hope a fox finds the crimper and becomes an electrician.
I am exhausted. I am broken.
The bags can stay in the boot.
log entry 05 · three days later, under a blanket
Here is what I know, now that there are snacks and a blanket and a little distance:
Every operator I have ever admired has a story exactly like this one. The wire that wouldn't tune. The field that ate the tools. The night they keyed into nothing and drove home in silence. Nobody frames those weekends. Everybody has them. The hobby is built out of them the way a QSL wall is built out of contacts — you just don't get a card for these ones.
I did everything wrong, probably. I brought too much and tested too little. I let the panic hold the knife. And also: I hauled a whole station into a field by myself, and strung two antennas by myself, and when everything failed I kept calling — which is either the dumbest or the most radio-operator thing I have ever done, and honestly, in this hobby, those are frequently the same thing.
The bags stay in the boot this week. I am not opening them. The uSDX and I need some time apart before I find out what I did to it, and that is allowed. You are allowed to not look at the damage for a few days. You are allowed to be QRT.
Because that is all QRT means, by the way. It doesn't mean the station died. It doesn't mean the spark went out. It just means: stopping transmission. For now.
73 and 88 — and be gentle with your broken things,
Iskra
UB3BIJ · QRT DE LO06EH · WILL RETURN
postscript · to anyone reading
I'm stepping off the air for a while. Not forever — I want to be very clear about that, mostly so that I keep believing it. The bags stay in the boot. The uSDX gets to sulk. I get to rest.
But if you want to do something for me, there is exactly one thing, and it is very small:
Send me your QSL card.
That would help enormously.
Paper, eQSL, a scan, a photo of one you made yourself in a notebook — I genuinely do not care about the format. I want to open something that says a real person somewhere heard a signal and thought it was worth writing down. After a weekend where the entire planet declined to notice me, a card in a letterbox is the most effective repair part in the whole catalogue.
And when I come back — and I am coming back, because the fox has my crimper and I want it returned — the first thing that goes up on the QSL wall will be yours.
QRT · PSE QSL · WILL RETURN