Mazi was a short drive from Vouni (5B/CY-033). As my GPS showed only a few minutes left to the peak along the highway, I turned a corner and saw a perfectly round, verdant hill in the distance (the sort of hill where the Teletubbies live).
The summit is likely on the flatter peak in the background.
However, it turned out that no romping creatures with television bellies lived there. I continued past and turned off the highway onto a dirt road leading through fields of vineyards and rising gently towards a gentle peak.
This four-point peak is a short drive from Paphos. The name “Vouni” means “mountain”, but it is more of a gentle grass-covered hill in the middle of a wine-producing region. The paved road up into the mountains is fairly steep, I noticed on the way back down that it warned of a 14% grade. The roads through town itself are a bit narrow, but I threaded the Landcruiser through carefully. A narrow road runs past the summit to the north. Although the road is dirt, it is well packed and not rutted, so I think any car would be able to manage it. When I got to the point marked “P” on the map, I pulled the car southward onto the grass. I then followed the tree line up to the top of the hill.
Pull off at P, then walk up along the tree line. There is a hint of old track just to the west side of the trees separating the fields.Despite the rain, the field was not too muddy, so no problems backing out.Continue reading “SOTA: 5B/CY-033 (Vouni)”
The first thing I have to say about this peak is “beware of false prophets”. Many hilltops and even many hilltop churches in Cyprus are named Profitis Ilias — he was a popular guy, so make sure you activate the right one. This isn’t hard, though, the GoogleMaps link from the SOTA Summit page took me right to the correct peak, an 8-point summit north of Paphos and about a two-hour drive from Nicosia.
This is one of the least scenic peaks, right up there with Xylias, since this peak is effectively in someone’s backyard and you are likely to find yourself activating on a small corner of land between power lines and a commercial antenna site. There are some nice views downward from that site if you peek between tall bushes, but this peak does not feel at all like a nature walk. On the other hand, it is very much a drive-on peak that does not require an off-road vehicle. It is not far from Limassol, so anyone visiting Cyprus for a weekend could easily rent a car and put this peak on their list.
This four-point peak is about an hour’s drive from Nicosia. I had planned to visit peaks 32 and 40 on the same outing, but dropped the last one because conditions were so good that I spend quite a while on the first two. GPS driving instructions will get you to the point that a gravel road branches off westward from route E101. That road then winds around a bit between farms and houses and gradually climbs upward towards the peak. At one point, which is seen nicely on the OpenTopo map, the road forks. Actually, the two ends of the fork are connected by road so it is a loop, but that connecting segment is relatively steep, so I would recommend just taking the upper branch in and out.
Mavrogenis is an eight-point SOTA peak not far from the Kikkos Monastery. There is a parking area to the south side of route E912 (34.9708N,32.7622E).
This is the view looking northwards on the way up to Kykkos Monastery. There is a large grassy field to the left of this side where you can park.Continue reading “SOTA: 5B/CY-010 (Mavrogenis)”
I had last Friday off and since the weather was ideal, I thought it would be fun to spend the day casually traipsing from band to band at a single site. I chose Kreatos (5B/CY-043), the closest peak to my home near Nicosia. I usually prefer to activate new peaks rather than revisit old ones, but I was really in the mood to operate rather than drive all over the island. Still, I feel like I need to do something new with each activation, so the new element for this one was try operating FT8 in addition to CW. As it turns out, I also added a new band: 15 meters.
I have had exactly one FT-8 mode contact on my FT-817, so I am now declaring myself an expert. I am sure there are aspects of this that I haven’t discovered yet, but what I have works and will get a field test on my next SOTA outing. Before I forget how it all works, I thought it best to make some notes.
This one point peak is just above the town of Steni and overlooks Chrysochous Bay. For me, it was a trek across the island, but it would be a short drive for someone starting out from Paphos. On the way, I passed a number of familiar roads from previous activations, so there is probably some reasonably efficient way to visit a few of the peaks in the area on a single day or weekend, but I have been doing them one at a time.
Getting there is easy: tell your GPS to head to the The Monastery of Virgin Mary Chrysolakournas in Steni. The road to the church winds a bit, but it is in excellent shape, and there is a gravel parking lot next to the church.
The parking lot is to the right. Due to pandemic restrictions, the church itself was closed.
From there, the road continues up, transitioning from asphalt to cement, to dirt. The road is passable with a 4-WD vehicle, although it is deeply rutted some places and in other places is a rough ride over rock face. The road winds around the back of the hill and keeps going beyond the summit. The top of this hill is relatively flat and anywhere along the back road is in the activation zone.
The French interactive fiction competition went live over this last weekend with ten games maintaining a fairly consistent ratio of about ten to one with IFcomp over the last few years. A variety of authoring systems were employed including Moiki, Ink, Inform 6, Ren’Py, and Various flavors of Twine. Play time ranged from about fifteen minutes to about two hours.
As in previous iterations of the competition, judges vote on the games by assigning a score from one to ten in the following categories: Overall best work, Technical Quality, Quality of Writing. There is also a special prize for the story that best captures the yearly theme, this year “Ruins and Decay”. Voting is open through 10 January using an online form that can be completed in French or English.
I played the games in a random order and will review them in the same order, below. Note that the competition allows online handles or pseudonyms, some author names might be revised when results are announced.
