SOTA 5B/CY-005, Moutti tis Tremethousaras

The ranger station or fire lookout station is at the orange arrow, just a bit short of the peak. I operated from right next to that station and as far as I could tell nothing was higher. In any event, according to topo maps, I was in the activation zone.

Although it was the weekend, several Forestry Department workers were there and came over to see what I was doing. I did my best to explain, but my Greek isn’t great. Eventually I remembered that I had a handout on ham radio prepared by the Cyprus Amateur Radio Society in my backpack, one copy in Greek and one in English, so I showed them the Greek one and there were nods all around. “Ah, a hobby. Okay!”

They did not mind me operating up there after I assured them that my low power HF equipment would not interfere with the their VHF communication system. Of course, with people watching, putting up the antenna went a lot less smoothly than usual, but eventually I got it up. The trees up there are pretty short, so a mast of some sort is recommended.

They got quite a kick out of seeing me operate a few stations on CW, each time calling out the country worked. I was a hot day and I felt like I had taken them away from their jobs long enough, so I didn’t try to maximize contacts, but packed up after a run on 20m and headed to the next peak.

I wasn’t sure how they would feel about me taking pictures of the ranger station — photography at some official sites is discouraged, so here is a picture of a locally endemic tree, which grows next to a sign explaining that it is a locally endemic tree.

One thought on “SOTA 5B/CY-005, Moutti tis Tremethousaras”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.