EARN the Lithuanian Lighthouse award!

Juodkrante Lighthouse – LIT-001 Lithuania – was “discovered” after beer drinking and brainstorming session with my colleagues LY3MU and LY2FN, on 2001, a few days left to the International Lighthouse weekend. This lighthouse is in operation; it is sending both the light and radio beacon signals to ships in the Baltic Sea. Therefore permissions were obtained from the local Council, National Park & Forestry and the State Hydrology Agency (who recalls the right name?). As a result of publicity and talks with right persons, we have got access to the top balcony of the lighthouse and access to the lighthouse 220 VAC power supply. The team consisted from: LY1DR, LY1DF, LY2DX, LY2FN, LY3MU, LY3TT (forgotten anyone?). Even with modest wire antennas we were successful on all the HF bands, for exception of 160m. The 2m band was mostly operated by LY3MU and LY1DF by using an ancient Albrecht 1W FM HTs, however, fantastic QSO distances up to 1000 km were reached.

The activation included 3 operating positions: LY2FN home-made transceiver, TS-850 and 2m HTs and LY3MU verticals on the top of the lighthouse tower. However, due to relatively poor TS-850 front-end, operation on HF was possible from a single workstation at a time only. WX was fantastic and the rest of operators were enjoying hitchhiking deserted sand dunes at the seaside, while the others were operating. On 2002 a similar expedition was organized, with a big crowd of operators and gear; I’ve got plenty of photos both from 2001 and 2002, unfortunately left them on my ham-shack table in Lithuania; these will be uploaded for public display on this ham-page after when I visit LY-land again. 73!