See also: photos of expedition

by Yuri Zaruba, UA9OBA (RRC#1),
Vice-President of Russian Robinson Club
P.Box 1, Novosibirsk-92,
630092, Russia
E-mail: NSI@LVS.RU

The Arctic region and it's islands are thoroughly investigated. Or, so we think. Still the number of people who put everything at stake in order to find and open the cherished NEW ONE is not growing less. Neither in Russia nor in the world.

Recently the high-latitude polar film-and-radio DX-pedition "Lost Islands" came to a successful completion. It was dedicated to the 100-th birth anniversary of G. Ushakov, the outstanding polar explorer and of A. Zavenyagin, the pioneer of the Russia's Far North and the first director of famous "Norilsk Nickel" plant.

The expedition started on April, 16, 2001 and went through Norilsk - Dickson Isl. - Eclipse bay - Srednij Isl. - Golomyannyj Isl. (Sedov Archipelago) - Ushakova Isl. - Domashnij Isl. (Severnaya Zemlya) - Uedineniya Isl. - Isachenko Isl. (Sergeya Krilova Islands) - Mona Islands - Dickson Isl., finishing again in Norilsk on the 2nd of May. There the whole crew of 13 parted with the local participants and flew home to Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, Lipetsk and Moscow.

The main task of the expedition was carried out. The Ushakova Island - the last "white spot" of the Central Arctic had been discovered for ham radio and assigned a number AS-156 (A NEW ONE!) in accordance with the International "Islands On The Air" (IOTA) program. Six years of dreaming, planning and searching ways and means ended up in a wonderful result.

The detailed story about the expedition is still to come, but now we can proudly state - we made it! No one and never before used a ham radio call-sign from Ushakova Island. We opened up this one and activated several other rare Arctic islands, giving to the "IOTA hunters" this great opportunity to add more than 25,000 QSOs to their account. During the DX-pedition the team of 12 polar "Robinsons" was ruled by the only lady in the group - our polar "Friday" - Victoria, RA0BM. And that was quite symbolic because we really won!

People familiar with the Arctic can evaluate the amount of hard work done and the price paid for this victory. Constantly fighting with the cold, operating from a tent (with temperatures like -24 C inside), using radios with frozen and barely visible LCDs. Doing an awful lot of physical work in order to provide our living and successful operation. Multiple loading and unloading the helicopter, each time handling more than 1500 kg of expedition cargo - radio equipment, wooden boards, power generators, barrels with fuel and boxes with ice-frozen provision. Unfolding the setups and installing antennas whereas the greasing inside the masts is more like a glue. Doing that stuff several times a day, like it was on the 28th of April, when we managed to visit 4 (!) islands, Uedineniya (AS-057), Sergeya Kirova (AS-050), Mona (AS-068) and Dickson (AS-005), all in one day. Cutting snow-bricks and building walls to windproof our "home". And so many other things that might come along during an autonomous expedition to as Far North as the very northernmost region of the Kara sea.

Besides, as I mentioned before, this was a kind of film-and-radio DX-pedition. We had a group of professional film makers in the crew and they were using their camera most of the time. So we could not express in some particular words what we really thought about different things like, for example, that cold, that wind, that weight and thatЕ metal with it's thermal conductivity. Of course we had humor for a constant help and a reliable companion. And to the above mentioned things I might add at list one thermos from "KENWOOD" which got thoroughly frozen and perfectly served to convert hot tea into a piece of ice in just 10 minutes, the polar toilets made of snowbricks with no roof, the obviously existing polar bears, and Е And all that against the moments of complete silence and solemn solitude in the middle of the glittering white expanse of snow, sparkling in the rays of deceivingly bright, blinding but cool in these high latitudes sun, and the unreal transparent blue of ice. The Arctic!

Ushakova Island

Perhaps this was the most difficult part of the expedition. The island itself is covered by the dome of ice and snow. It was not so easy to find it in the very north of Kara sea on the border with the Arctic Ocean. No wonder that the island was discovered and appeared on the map much later than the North Pole - only in 1935. That is only 66 years ago - may still be within the memory of the older generation of hams.

The polar station on Ushakova island was closed in the end of 1980's. The two houses embedded in the ice was all that left of it. We made our shack #2 in one of these houses - 100 meters away from our tent camp. This house got only half way down in the ice, and we had to crawl into the radio-apartment on the belly. The other one got grown in almost up to the roof. All we had for the beginning was a snow-storm and 24-hours long absence of propagation. In such a way the 81 degrees North's latitude welcomed us to the Arctic!

First two days we fought for our lives cutting snow bricks and building the wall to protect our tents from the gusty wind (20-25 mps - almost impossible to stay on the feet). No hot food, the cold and the wind was all that we had. During the day the sun stayed a bit higher in the sky, and at night it would roll down closer to the horizon. We moved slowly because in such conditions a living organism obtains a sort of cold-weariness (?) - it's functions, including physical movements, slow down several times. Generally it was around minus 28 C at night and up to minus 20 at day. I should say that in this region it really felt like a much colder because of the high humidity and the wind. Before you could finally go asleep in your sleeping-bag you would usually accompany your friends on teeth-chatter for a while. That was funny!

Working CW was also quite difficult. With mittens on you can not do it on a key-board, like Alex, RZ9OO or on a manipulator, like Andy, UA0BA and the rest of the guys. I mentioned this couple because their hands got black from the cold perhaps more than everybody else's. SSB was perhaps a bit easier, still one bare hand was most of the time turning second VFO dial knob and writing the log. Computers refused to work, ink in pens froze, so simple slate-pencils were in use. As a result - 13 thousand QSOs in RI0B log. One more thing to remember is that in conditions like these a living organism obtains a sort of cold-weariness. All functions, including physical movements, slow down several times.

The feeling that the whole civilized world is several thousand miles away was in our minds all the time. Well it felt like this. Anyway, the nearest more or less warm and lived-in place was hundreds of miles away. Still some of the local inhabitants visited us regularly. White bears felt our presence very quickly and hurried up to find out whether they could have something or somebody for lunch. One of them came up as close as just a few meters from the tent. What we saw had nothing in common with well-fed and peaceful countenance of a white bear from the zoo. When the five-shot Remington failed to fire four times it was not funny any more. Luckily the second carbine "Los-4" proved the reputation of our native arms. The bear ran away heading north towards Kara sea, perhaps in search for some normal and more eatable people. And we decided to take some essential measures to bear-proof our life - like equipping all positions with rifles, signal-pistols and VHF radios.

Severnaya Zemlya

I never thought that in order to celebrate the receipt of new IOTA number (AS-156) we would have to warm up our traditional Russian drink (W0DKA) so that to make mulled wine (we called it glintwein). We also had some Champaign and about 3 kg of beer ice, which we had to melt and boil using open fire. Do you like hot beer? Well, if you donТt Ц youТre certainly not a polar explorer.

Among what we ate there also was some bread from Dickson which we sawed by a compass saw and some axe cut red sausage. One very popular kind of food, prepared by Paul, RV0AR's mom - salo, or salted pork fat, could be easily cut by knife. It was commonly served in the course of Spirit (SP1RT) program, which was not very often though. I must note here that celebrations with alcohol drinks used to happen exceptionally on very significant occasions, like meeting with the few settlers of Srednij island where we organized kind of a bath (we could use local diesel to make water as hot as + 60 C) or before we were about to fly to another hard-nut island, like Uedineniya - in the middle of Kara sea. As far as alcohol is concerned in general. In the conditions, like in the Arctic, human organism constantly suffers from dehydration. So after you warm yourself up with alcohol, you will very soon get really cold. Such additional amount of work your organism will have to apply in order to fight against alcohol poisoning makes it less attractive and quite dangerous. Never the less, one night we took some alcohol in and still contrived to make about 1000 QSOs from Srednij island (AS-042) using RS0B call-sign. And we left a big empty bottle of Novosibirsk popular vodka "Otechestvo" ("Fatherland") with a hand-written message in it to the possible followers - those who will come and operate from the island next time.

After Ushakova we flew to Domashnij island (Severnaya Zemlya) where we visited the grave of Georgij Ushakov. That was the place where the last significant geographic discovery of the XX century was made. Georgij Ushakov was the chief of the first expedition to Severnaya Zemlya. The gallant team of four people explored, described and put on the map this group of islands - Severnaya Zemlya in 1930 - 1932. Among those brave people was V. Khodov - the chairman of St. Petersburg amateur short-wave section. In the simple original museum on Srednij island we found old documents and radiograms, saying that he used his amateur call-sign EU3CF with letter "X" before the prefix, notifying that he was working from the Arctic. It sounds like truth that you can hardly find a place in the world where an amateur radio operator didn't leave his footprint!

Uedineniya Island (AS-057)

"The Island of Treasures" that's what we called the derelict polar observatory on Uedineniya island, lost in the very center of Kara sea. The station with itТs warehouses full of provisions, different hydro-meteorological equipment, fuel and so many other things is formally on a temporary lay up list. In fact, all that stuff is just left lying about. Huge funds were literally frozen in this land, abandoned by people and God. Large and significant polar observatory sunk in snow like Titanic.

Inside the diesel generator room we found the chief-mechanic's log book, where he kept records on the maintenance works, fueling and oiling the engines. In the end there was a final note in fat red pencil: November, 23 1996, "The evacuation order has been received. Pouring the water out. The station is ... The last word is hard to translate, but you can possibly guess the meaning. So much hard work had been done to build up one of the biggest Soviet Russia's polar stations. Year after year scores of people lived and worked in quite severe conditions of the Far North, and now it all should end up just like this. Greatest disappointment of these people was bluntly obvious.

All main buildings of the station were situated deep inside the bay curve, thus providing better conditions for disembarking the ships which used to plough through the ice once every 2 - 3 years. Yet, we decided to take better position in terms of radio operation. We chose a small house approximately 500 meters away from the base. That was the polar bases radio center "UGV". There were high masts around and lots of HF and VHF radio equipment inside the house. We even found a few LF 136 kHz transmitters there. In the warehouse we saw stacks of masts, coils of high quality HF/VHF cables and antenna wires. Perfect set of everything, that might make a noticeable contest station.

Still, one group of operators flew several hundred meters higher and set up a position in a small radio shack. We just made some distance from the metal structures and gained more room and higher place for our HF antennas. The result was very good - we made about 10 thousand QSOs RU0B in three days from two positions.

Of course, the living conditions were much more comfortable on Uedineniya island. Our second position was equipped with FT1000MP, AMERITRON AL-811H and CUSHCRAFT R-8 vertical and the temperature in the shack never got lower than minus 20 C. It was much warmer at the main place. We used another FT1000MP with TL922 and A3S antenna. Sometimes we could pump the temperature up to +7 C. It was all due to that linear, the more actively we worked the warmer it used to become? the warmer it used to become the faster we worked. And so on and so forth.

And we seemed to be very popular on the air from Uedineniya Isl. even though it was not a New One and it already was on the IOTA list as AS-057. Truth is that there were only 18 QSOТs made from this island approximately ten years ago. So it was perhaps number two among the most wanted islands in Asia, rating 1,1%. And the pileups were practically as huge as on Ushakova, so we had to work split frequency listening 5 to 20 kHz up.

Rare Islands

After contacting G3KMA on the air we came to a decision that our next destination would be Sergeya Kirova Islands, AS-050. Their rating was 8,1% (only 108 QSOs were ever made from that place) and that was in the limits of 10% - "the most wanted islands" by IOTA classification. From now on we moved in a manner of special military squad - short helicopter jumps. In fact, Sergeya Kirova were a bit off the preliminary co-ordinated course, but we solved the problem having applied some additional financial resources. Literally by paying some extra money.

The helicopter, half fueled, started from Golomynnyj island, where there was an active meteo-station, picked us up from Uedineniya Island and carried us to Isachenko Island, one of Sergeya Kirova group (AS-050). Thirty four minutes later we mounted our set up and showed up on the air as RU0B/p. Three hours of operation resulted in 473 QSOТs. Might have been better if we could do anything to put our working frequency in order. People would call us continuously on the transmit frequency and it looked like nobody would listen to Valery, RW3GW, saying "Listening UP!". Well, every time we started from a new point things would look like that, and some time would always have been spent to put it all in order. Unfortunately, this time we practically had no time, so it was not a big surprise but very disappointing. We had to ignore requests to work CW, nothing to say about some questions like "when on 40 meter?"

The helicopter pilots began to worry as the weather started to change. As I mentioned before, our helicopter was short of fuel and now our successful arrival to the main land could to a significant extent depend on the direction of the wind. We took off before it got too bad, left the Kara sea and fortunately made it to the refueling point at Eclipse bay from where we continued our trip along the coast line.

The decision to make a short visit to Mona Islands was made in a typically Russian way - just in the last 5 minutes of our presence on Sergeya Kirova. Alex, RZ9OO, hurried to announce that good news on the air right on the spot, so we burnt the bridges. Nobody remembered about the fuel problem, we just got preoccupied by the idea. The antennas were disassembled only to such an extent as to fit in the helicopter. We assigned each otherТs roles on the way, so it took us roughly about 15 minutes to get on the air after we landed on one of the Mona islands, called Kravkova. Once there was a small base on this island, but people left everything about 25 years ago. Among the structures that we found we chose a half destroyed house which once served as a bath. We stayed only about 2 hours and made 342 QSOs using RS0B/p, AS-068. Before we left we celebrated the end of the active part of our expedition picturing the whole team and the helicopter crew against their hard working machine. The pilots congratulated us and ceremonially handed us a kind of a Cup which in fact was a powerful HF triode GU5B (5KW out). To our great surprise they dug it out of the depths of the helicopter. We made a salute from our rifles, loaded our staff and headed south-east towards Dickson. Very tired but very happy we came back to the point from where we started. And for the rest of that day people still could hear on the air our Dickson call-sign R3CA/0, AS-005.

Epilogue

During this expedition a group of professionals shoot a film for the popular in Russia and former USSR TV program "Traveler's Club" on the First national TV channel. These were the same people from Novosibirsk "LBL-Siberia producer's center" who made a film about our Antarctic "Millenium expedition" a one and half years ago. By the way, that film was demonstrated at the 6-th Russian IOTA/DX conference held in Lipetsk in 2000. Now we have a request from RSGB for the new film and we hope to perform it for the first time at the forthcoming international IOTA conference in Great Britain. We also plan to make VHS format copies of the film for those who wish to have it in the home video collection. So there is still a lot of work to do after the expedition: the film, articles, QSLing, search for sponsors etc.

The expedition like this is a serious and risky venture. The Arctic rarely forgives mistakes and you have to be very well prepared and equipped to face what it can put forth. We were not new-comers but we would hardly make it if we did not have really experienced people, professional polar men in our team. Such as Vladimir Chukov (R3CA) - President of the scientific-expedition Center "The Arctic" and the Vice-president of the National Tourist Association, and his colleagues - Leonid Safonov, Vyacheslav Gosuderev from Moscow and Igor Smilevets from Engels. All these people are well known not only in Russia, they all are experienced travelers and scientists. We were lucky to have them by our side and we are thankful for what they did to make us stay alive and successfully end our expedition.

The group of film people was led by "LBL Siberia" general producer Eugenij Rasskazov and film director Boris Mamlin. Our camera-man, Andrej Frick, was also formerly licensed as RX9ULT. We gave him the opportunity to make the last 14 QSOs CW. He did it with his left hand, holding his camera in the right hand.

The main crew of operators consisted of Victoria Koryukina (RA0BM), Yuri Zaruba (UA9OBA), Valery Sushkov (RW3GW), Alexander Sukharev (RZ9OO), Andrej Moiseev (UA0BA) and Pawel Tsvetkov (RV0AR). We expected also RA9JX, RZ9UA and RA0AM to accompany us, but they could not make it for different valid reasons.

We are also very happy to mention all the beautiful people we met on the continental part of the Far North. Especially Alex, RA0BA, who was constantly in touch on radio and the other guys who helped on our way to the islands. Andrej (UA0BIW), Yuri (UA0BHC), Gennadij (UA0BHJ), Nick (UA0BBB), Valerij (UA0BAA), Leonid (UA0BFN), and Peter (RA0BK). We also want to thank polar radio operators from Dikson Island - Vladimir (RA0BY), Sergej (RA0BX), Valerij (RZ9DX/0) and our helicopter mechanic Alexander (UA0BBU). Whenever you hear these people on the air, take into account their location and the conditions of propagation in these latitudes.

It would be unfair not to mention all the other people who helped us with radio equipment, means of transportation, their time and energy - Sergej (UA9OK), Vadim (RA9JX/9), Mike (UA9OVM), Helen (UA9OTM), students of the Novosibirsk State Technical University club station (RW9OWD), guys from "Breeze" company - RZ3GE & C, "Unicomm" company - RA3AUU & C and our good friends - RU3DX, UA3AB, DL6ZFG...

Our general sponsor, inspirer and the organizer of the expedition was RAO (Russian Joint-Stock Company) NORILSK NICKEL - one of the largest mining and metal company in world. In April, 2001 the Company celebrated the 100-th birth anniversary of the outstanding person - the well-known polar explorer and the fist Company director Abrahamia Zavenyagin. RAO Norilsk Nickel agreed to release funds for our expedition after Victoria (RA0BM), on behalf of the amateur radio society of Norilsk addressed and met the managerial executives of the Company. The budget of our expedition was 50.000 USD, which is a considerable amount of money, first time ever spent on an "IOTA" program DX-pedition (not DXCC).

So much was for the first time. First time a New One for "IOTA" program, first expedition in the course of Russian national islands program "RRA", first time a new country for Russian popular "R-150-S" award. Rare ITU 75 zone... A total of 25 thousand QSOs - that's a significant result!

Thank you for supporting us on the air, thank you for the QSO from the Arctic!

"Find and never give up!" - the motto of the high-latitude polar film-and-radio DX-pedition "The Lost Islands"

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