I was visiting the family of my wife last week. As you might guess my wife is from Lithuania. Now after Corona withdraws a bit, we could finally visit her family and this beautiful country again. We haven’t been there for more than 2 years now and this time I took my HAM stuff with me the first time.
But before I flew over I had a quick contact with the RRT. The RRT is the local authority in Lithuania responsible for everything related to HAM radio. Interesting enough HAM operators with “B” licenses (General License in the US) have a lot of permissions in Lithuania. Much more than I am used to have in Germany.
Below is a excerpt from a document provided by the German DARC regarding CEPT ECC/REC/(05)06. As you can see all the nice DX bands are useable with up to 100 watts.
Since I love to do some field ops, I really got used to put lightweight equipment together. Even so light, it worked fine for flying. I took my KX2 with me, a 5m fiber mast, cable to build an antenna and a 9:1 UnUn made by the QRP guys. The KX2 only outputs up to 10watts, so a QRP UnUn was fully enough.
Using the cable I was able to build a 6,50m long endfed antenna for the 20m band. I really wanted to use this band as I am not allowed to use it in Germany with my current license class.
After assembling the antenna, I put it up on a dead tree in the backyard of my parents-in-law’s house. Please mind the bike, it was there before and no it is not the counterpoise. I still had a counterpoise wire of 5m length in place.
Using just 10W on FT8 I was able to make 36 contacts in 18 countries. Not bad for the small time I was on air. Special thanks to everyone who was in contact with me during this time!