Finally this morning we got clearance to fly home and we will be treated there. I have problems with the rib and chest compression but doctors say they only needs time. Vlad RV1CC´s arm is different. He is in Temuco now and will be back to Russia on Monday. It is a mission impossible to rearrange flights in the middle of tourist season here. I will write hundred times that I will never fly Iberia again. I called their office in Santiago for 2 hours and noone even picked it up. LAN Chile was very helpful and in the lcoal office they helped us very well to get arrange the MEDIF (fit-to-fly) document for all of us.

Yesterday I payed the damages in the 4WD car and early this morning we all visited the local attorney (Fiscalo) to finish the legal issues. Hats off, it was slick and very professional.

I flew back to Santiago this morning and will continue via Madrid to Amsterdam tomorrow. RV1CC and RA0FU are at the moment in Temuco CE6 and they will fly back home on Monday where Vlad´s arm will be treated further. Marco will fly back to Copiapo and will finish all outstanding issues from there.

We all very gratefully appreciate all the support and encouragement we get from the whole amateur radio community. Thank you.

Last Friday we successfully arrived to Caleta Tortel after abt 450 km driving on gravel roads on very mountainous terrain. We boarded our boat Jorge Montt and left for Wager Island. Due to the bad weather conditions in the Messier Channel we had to stay overnight in a protected bay. We arrived to Wager Island on Saturday noon. We quickly set up the antennas at the tideline and the pileups started. At around 1800 the rain started too and was followed by gale force winds. The tents were deformed by the wind and even the ¨all weather proof¨tents could not resist the sheer pressure of water and soon we were all soaked. Food, clothes, everything. In the meantime our boat sought protection from the elements in a protected bay in Byron Island. By  2000 local we lost contact with them too. We spent the rest of the night trying to operate, communicate with the CE Navy and protect ourselves from the rain and wind. At 9 AM we had to reduce operation to minimum to spare gasoline for emergency communication. At 1 PM we were told by the CE Navy base to leave the island immediately and seek refuge. I had a last frenetic hour on 17m running EU at 5 qso/min rates under a piece of plastic hand keying on my knee and paperlogging until the captain gave the final order to leave. At that moment we had 2400 QSOs from XR7W in the log. Crossing the channel again at the Peñas Golf was horrifying. We got back to Tortel by 5AM Sunday morning. After obtaining the necessary documentation to Roger we left Tortel at 11AM. Everything was ¨fine¨ until 1930 when near to a small place called Bahia Murta our rented van slipped of the gravel road and hit a rock frontally and turned upside-down. The car was frontally damaged and we were first taken to a nearby village called Rio Tranquillo which  had a first aid outpost where our injuries were inspected and we were immediately sent to Coyhaique abt 200 km away in an ambulance car, the nearest place with a hospital.

There we were inspected more thoroughly and xrayed. Vlad RV1CC was diagnosed with a broken left upper arm, Marco CE6TBN with cuts and bruises and a broken rib, Yuri RA0FU with cuts and me  with a broken finger (not cw!), a broken rib and am suffering from compression on the torax bone. The question this morning was if Vlad had to be operated here or can be flown home to SPB. I feel very lucky to survive that accident  and I hope we all get the fit-to-fly (sic!) clearance asap.

Of course our first priority at the moment is to get out from Coyhaique. The damage in car, equipment and additional costs are estimated in excess of 11k euro. Some photos were taken, as soon as I will a bit more fit, I will publish them somewhere. If you can and want to contribute to lessen this damages please feel free to contact me via this email. Please feel free to circulate this info bulletin.

This expedition took us to the most difficult places in non-Antarctic Chile and it frustrates me that we missed the very last step.

73!

zoli ce7/ha1ag from Coyhaique, Chile

Yesterday the return from Melinka was a bit more adventerous than expected. Due to the unexpectedly warm weather across Chile people started to mass exodus from the Central regions to the cooler south. The ferry from Quellon to Melinka was fully booked and the ferry on Tuesday night was fully sold out thus an alternative transport had to be found. The solution was arranged by Sr. Masilla in form of an ancient Cessna marked as Norton (!) which could be the pride of an airplane museum. Knowing  the plan was severely overloaded I could not really enjoy the magnificent views of the Chiloes.  I kept my eye on the altimeter and noticed that the pilot had to keep the nose a degree upwards to compensate altitude loss. Next to the natural beauties two things had to be mentioned about Chiloe. First the abundance of salmon farms. In the archipelago there is not a single bay or  channel not scattered by salmon farms. Only the west side of the island managed to preserve its pristine beauty. The high waves and strong off-shore currents of the open Pacific prevents any salmon farming there. One way it is nice that the people got a new source of income however the natural impact on the long term is difficult to estimate.  The other thing I found disturbing is the forest fires across the whole island. Seeing from above it seems the peasants set the the underfoliage on fire for one reason. The pilot was coursing them through the whole way.  If U still wanna see something of the old Chiloe rather book a flight soon!

Landing on the gravel of Castro was wholeheartedly welcome. On the airport Marco and Javier was waiting and we went to a a restaurant serving curanto which is a Chilote specialty made of different kinds of shells,  a big chunk of pork, half a chicken, small sausages and potato pans. It is fantastic dish, with a calory value somewhere in the five digit range. Seeing the empanada booths here, Castro will definitely not be a place to loose weight! 

The local hospedaje is just a block away from the main square, run by an old lady serving home made pastery and rolls in the morning. Rather stay here for one more than going back to the rather boring Puerto Montt.

Although I see more Mapuche people here than before in Temuco, I haven´t spotted any Nacion Mapuche signs or graffittis which are so common in Temuco.

Growing prosperity is obvious everywhere however the prices are still lower than in PM.

The trip to Melinka on Ascension Island is over… Melinka is a very pictoresque place with beautiful seaside, and dark blue ocean and the view of the snowcapped Cordilleras on the east.

Arriving there was less difficult than expected, just a thick one hour flight to Puerto Montt where there are frequent and cheap buses to Castro. Castro has an airstrip maintained by the local aero club. hmmm… the combination of the grass and gravel doesn´t make a good strip I can attest. There are frequent flights on first com-first serve basis to all around, including Melinka. The plane was a modern piper with a cool pilot who dared to bring his (ehem our) plan into deepdive from 2000 to 200 feet to get below the cloud cover.

Thanks to the arrival of ¨salmoneras¨ Melinka has not only a paved (!) airstrip but a generator as well as GSM coverage. That was more than a surprise.

At the airport I was picked up by Sr. Mansilla who happens to be the local mayor as well as owner of a hospedeja. Many of the locals are trying to ride the tourist wave and opening up hospedejas in their backyard. In our case the hospedeja was a woodboard house with 2 m2 rooms. Fortunately the local food served were much better !   The garden was abt 30-40m above the sea level from abt 100m from the beach. Less ideal but offered good takeoff to most directions except to JA on SP.

The pileups were done on the old ways: hand-keyed CW (do U remember?) and paper logging   The pileups were huge however the daytime absorption gave a full blackout on all bands until 6-7 PM. 20m recovered just before our sunset but by then it was already too late for EU.

30m and 40m were the money bands with huge pileups. JA SP pileups were unbelievable with multiple layers of JAs calling. 30m died around midnight and the lowering MUF forced the pileups to 40m. It was interesting thatthe NA calls faded well before the EUs despite the truly N-S path.

What I failed to understand:

- Why some people work an IOTA several time or even on several bands?

- Why some people are calling when they can´t hear the DX? (IK8OZZ, US7IID are U listening?)

- Why some people feel the need to work the same station with several calls of his when many are still waiting for their one and only shot?

- Why some people make QSOs with other people calls? like when a well-known Moscow or Kherson DXer calls us in the middle of a JA pileup with the same signal as a previous UA0 guy? Not to mention the Donetsk, Kiev, Croatia or North Swedish ” teams” ?

In summary, abt 2100 QSOs, all CW and still many storyies to tell, but this internat Cafe in Castro on Chiloe Island is closing…

CU in a few days maybe from Coyhaique.. (with photos)

Some very good news from Marco – electricity is available in Melinka, so won’t have to carry a generator on the bus and to the airplane. This is a very obvious highlight as well as the info about the plane flying from Castro to Melinka.

The photo shows the panorama of Melinka in Ascension Island.

The next trip will take me to… Chile… where else ? My favorite place to visit and the more I go the more I like it. This time it will be Iberia (Sorry LAN you just got the wrong price at the right time).

The chosen destination is Aisen Province in North Patagonia. Puerto Montt, Chiloe, Ascension Island (Melinka), Coyhaique, Tortel and Wagner Island. I hope these will all fit into the thick two weeks.

This time I updated my packing list and was trying to minimize it weight as well as volume.