Story 307DX/1 - Kaliningrad Story from 307DX/1 activity held during July 2008. Hello DXers A trip to 307 division has been on the Shadow DX’ers agenda for several years. This summer it finally happened when Chris 21DX116 and Patrik 21DX139 decided to face comrade Ivan’s border control and enter the beautiful national park of the Kuronian Spit. In order to enter Kaliningrad, or another part of Russia for that matter, a visa has to be obtained in advance. With Russian bureaucracy this procedure can really be a struggle but there are some limited opportunities to get a 5-day visa on a short notice, course part of the solution spells “Euros”. The border crossing is a 5-stop procedure including EU farewell, Russian visa control, customs declaration, a stop at the office to pay traffic insurance and so on…. Finally after more than an hour we where greeted “Welcome to Russia” by a female border guard that for sure had to be named “Olga”. Finally we where on our way into 307! Our first mission was to find somewhere to stay, as we had not been successful booking a room in advance. This proved to be a very difficult task as almost no one speaks, or even understands English. After trying a few places we decided it was time to hit the airwaves and forget about our little accommodation problem for a while. Sometimes problems just go away if fun is invited! The first station logged was 1TDT001 at 16:44 UTC. Propagation was slow and only 27 stations where logged in about one hour before we decided that it was dinner time. But first we had to attend to our little accommodation problem again… During the hour we where active, we noticed how a steady stream of people where walking from the beach, crossing the road and then disappearing in the deep forest. Instinctively we though that there might be something going on there, so we brought our little Golf on a tour straight into the dirt trails of the deep and dark forest… and what did we discover? A small village where the locals where having a barbecue with some tourists, drinking vodka and running back and forth on 4-wheelers like maniacs. An English speaking YL with a big strong Russian beer in her hand said that we could rent a room for the night, and after being approved by the owner we where inspecting our room and agreed to pay 400 rubels for the night. At that time the rain was poring down so we skipped the invitation for joining the BBQ and went to Lesnoy for dinner where we enjoyed an excellent chicken and a Russian beer. After dinner we made another attempt to stir up a pile, but propagation was still limited but we had some very limited but strong signals from France and 9:53 we logged Vincent 14DX007 with a steady 5/7 signal. Just one more station logged this evening, but propagation to Vincent was open for some time. Eventually it was time to call it a day, and we returned to our room and went to sleep pretty early to get up for the morning opening. On Sunday morning we turned down an invitation from our neighbors to have soup and vodka with them, instead we had a quick breakfast then packed out stuff and left the place to go back to our operating position. With decent propagation we logged the first station at 7:15 UTC and the first hour of operation we where able to log 101 stations, many with 57-59 reports. With 153 stations in the log at 9:53 UTC we decide to break for lunch as propagation where slowing down. But first went looking for a post office and we found one in Ribachy. Of course it was closed, and of course the Co-op store across the street didn’t have such luxery items. Finally we found greeting cards and we picked 5 to use as post cards. Time for lunch! We found a very nice looking restaurant in Ribacy and took a table. The beautiful blond Russian waitress did not speak a word English, but at this point we weren’t surprised at all. With menus in Russian, we tried asking for a lot of things and she finally seemed to understand the word “Schnitzel”, great! Schnitzel and Russian beer, mmm! Yummi! Well, it seems like “Schnitzel” translates to Fish is Russian, because fish is what we got served. Not bad, but just not Schnitzel… Anyway, after lunch we worked a few more contacts, then it was time to return to Lithuania to take a flight back home Monday morning. But there where one more important task to complete, we needed to buy and send a few post cards for proof which proved to be a challenge. There were no post cards available at all! Apparently people don’t send post cards from the Kurinian Spit. In the only open Coop store we found funny looking greeting cards, so we bough a few of these and started to look for stamps… hmm, another problem. The post office was closed and properly locked, Coop didn’t have stamps, or maybe they just didn’t understand our request. The clerk was around 10 years old. Anyway, the nice lady in the tax free shop promised to post the cards for us and we really hope she will… until this day, no reports of our beautiful post cards being received… The final number of stations logged where 215 due to the relative quiet conditions on the band. Equipment used was a FT-857 (100 W) and a mobile antenna. The team wish to thank John 47DX101 for his outstanding support (as always) and the QSL manager Tom 47DX052 who makes sure you will receive the beautiful QSL he made for us. Vy 73's Chris 21DX116 Patrik 21DX139 return