Story 47DX/SJ024 47DX/SJ024 Taeroe island (Tærø) I have through several years dreamt about being able to activate some of the many small uninhabited islands in Denmark. These islands are without bridges or ferries so a boat is needed. And there is no electricity available, so a generator is needed. Since my old Bamby11-antenna was handed over to Frank 13RF365 after our Poel island activation 2 months ago, I had to make a new antenna. And now I also wanted to use my RM KL500 amplifier, bought more than 12 years ago!! – and still never really used. Now the chances came to visit Taeroe island with a little help from a good friends who recently bought a motorboat. Taeroe island is privately owned and has a small harbour on the North side. We did not know if we could arrive via this harbour, and at the same time we knew that wind was expected to be max. 12 meters/second (m/s) from North-West. The island has some smaller bays at the south side so if we were told that arrival via the harbour was not possible, we would go to the south-side of the island to anchor up there – and take the small Zodiac the final 100-200 meters to land. We meet up in Petersvaerft Harbour at Sealand island and moved all the gear from the car to the motorboat. Soon we were on the way to Taeroe island – and arriving in the harbour we met the guy who owns the island. I explained why we were there and asked for his permission to stay in the harbour for a few hours. This was OK. So we assembled the antenna and set up the station, tested the equipment never used for an activation by me before, with help by Darran 26DX047 and Carsten 47DX132. The modulation was distorted/bad so I tried different kind of modifications. I brought a 100 meter long electrical wire from the generator to the power supplies (so the generator could be 100 meters away from the station to avoid noise) and I feared that I had a drop of voltage via that long wire. Anyway, after some testing I understood that the problem was the amplifier destroying the modulation and after I shut that off all was fine. Propagation had been very good lately, so I had quite high hopes for superb props. At midday, before leaving for the island, propagation was fantastic. But beginning the activity I understood that propagation was only “medium” and after 30 minutes it dropped to ZERO. During that period I made CQ’s and managed to work several Danish stations via ground wave. Gladly I could conclude that propagation came up again and I then worked between 2 and 3 stations/minute. Most operators respected to call me only when I said “QRZ” and this speeded up the QSO-rate. Around 20:00 local time it began to rain and wind did pick up, so Skipper told me “10 minutes – and then finish”. At the same time there where less takers, so at 20:10 local time (18:10 GMT) I stopped radio transmissions and we did de-assembling the station. 10 minutes later we left Taeroe island. I was happy, satisfied – and I learned a lot. 47DX002 Soren. return