Journal ·
I PACKED AN ENTIRE RADIO STATION INTO ONE BACKPACK
First ever radio expedition — a tent in a field near Suzdal, Cucumber Day, two antennas, five watts, and me.
DXpedition. Say it with me. DEE-EX-PE-DI-TION. Because that is what I am going on. Okay fine, technically real DXpeditions go to uninhabited coral atolls and I am going to a cucumber festival, but the backpack does not know that and the backpack is PACKED.
Inside the backpack, and I keep opening it to check: the uSDX, coiled feedline, the battery, the NanoVNA (for when — not if, WHEN — the antenna decides to be dramatic), a shameless amount of wire, cable ties, my key, a notebook for the log, and the Quansheng on top like a cherry. I have repacked it four times. Each time it gets slightly more perfect. This is normal behaviour and I will not be taking questions.
The plan. August 1–2, a field south of Suzdal, tent, base camp, overnight. My square out there is LO06EH — my very first activation from anywhere that is not my own rooftop. I am bringing TWO antennas, because I am a scientist now: the trusty EFHW that got me my first contacts, and a proper dipole, and I am going to run them head to head. Five watts, CW, 40 and 20 metres. If you hear a small polite signal from LO06 that weekend going dit-dah-dah at you — that is me, please come back, I will be so happy I will probably scare the crows.
And on the Quansheng I will hunt for locals on two metres, because after last week I have LEARNED that local FM contacts are medicine.
Why there? BECAUSE CUCUMBER DAY. Suzdal — and if you have never heard of Suzdal, buckle up — has held an actual festival in honour of the cucumber every summer for years, at the open-air Museum of Wooden Architecture, among real centuries-old wooden churches and windmills. Costumes, crafts, songs, pickles in every form the human mind can conceive. Suzdal has been growing cucumbers as its signature thing for centuries, so one day a year the whole town just… celebrates the vegetable. I respect it enormously.
And honestly, a festival for a cucumber is a very old idea wearing a new sundress. Before Christianity arrived, the agricultural calendar here ran on seasonal rites — sowing festivals, midsummer fires, harvest celebrations, the whole pre-Christian Slavic year turning around what the fields were doing. The church calendar later settled on top of it, the old habits stayed underneath (historians literally call it “dvoeverie”, double belief), and a thousand years later we are still finding reasons to gather in a field in late summer and celebrate what grew. Cucumber Day is the newest, silliest, most delightful link in a very, very long chain. I find that genuinely moving and also I want the pickles.
Suzdal itself is absurd, by the way. First mentioned in the chronicles in 1024 — the town is over a thousand years old. It is tiny, it has no railway, and it has more churches and monasteries per square metre than seems structurally possible; the white-stone monuments there are on the UNESCO World Heritage list. It is the crown jewel of the Golden Ring. And somewhere past its edge, out where the churches stop and the fields start, there will be a tent, a wire in a tree (measured this time!! probably!!), and me with a morse key.
The car is fed and ready. Full tank, because with the fuel situation being what it is lately I am not gambling my expedition on finding an open petrol station in the fields. If the Tiggo and I get stranded, at least I will be stranded WITH a working HF station, which, thinking about it, is the most prepared I have ever been for anything.
I am so excited I have already laid out what I am wearing. Field-expedition chic. You will not see it. The crows will see it. The 40 metre band will feel it.
QRV from LO06EH, 1–2 August, 40/20 m CW. Listen for me.
73 and 88, Iskra