
Vacation activity in 9A - some islands and one WFF activation.
It's a long time we have been to Croatia, so I booked a coach trip and a week stay in Vodice: the criteria was that there are ferry lines to many islands and a good bus transportation, so we were not bounded to one place for the whole week.
Nevertheless we started at the local beach - slightly overcrowded beachwalk but not bad.
And next day we inflated our kayak and crossed the narrow water strip to Logorun island. The guidebooks were advertising a wild donkey population there but we didn't meet any. Just a pleasant day at the rocks, great swimming and some CW and PSK-31 operation. The only disappointment was that the kayak remembered the damages from another Croatian trip few years ago and the patches peeled off. FT-817 was stored in an waterproof container and survived the salt moisture, my old Fujifilm Finepix camera was less fortunate - so the rest of the photos were made by a cellphone.
One day we dedicated to a visit of Krka National Park - 9AFF-003: there was a lot of boat trips offered in Vodice, we saved about a half of the money by taking a bus. The waterfalls are beautiful, we came through Lozovac entry and hiked across the boardwalks to Skradinski buk boat stop.
The boardwalks are quite overcrowded, we took a side road to a quiet area at the river bank and I did a short activation on 20m CW.
Took a swim under the bridge - a sweetwater was a nice change after few days of sea swimming - and boarded a boat to Skradin. While waiting for a Sibenik bus I found a geocache with a nice view of the town there.
And met some
This time we took a bus between Sibenik and Vodice but there is also a ferry line going through Prvic and Zlarin islands: we spent a day on each of them, nice rocky beaches there. On Prvic we met a friendly local guy who was interested in the mast and antenna - when I explained to him what I am doing, he replied "Oh! Like Nikola Tesla!"
On Zlarin we found a great spot near St. Nicolas Chapel. Again a leisure operation: in average 3 QSO and one swim in the sea.
Flora was on the Krka activation photo, and now some fauna:
Overall it was a great trip, not so many QSOs, but I finally made a design of special QSL cards both from 9AFF-003, and for other 9A QSOs, and will send them via bureau. Writing this in October - just bought a new color printer and printed the cards.