9th Masovian Radio Picnic in Celestynów

A get-together you come to with the family

On Sunday 4 October from 10:00 the forest centre at ul. Wojska Polskiego 46 filled with people carrying antennas, handhelds and name badges. The IX Mazovian Radio Picnic gathered around two hundred people: radio amateurs from Warsaw, from all over Mazovia and beyond, whole families with children, as well as enthusiasts who so far only know radio from stories. The event has been open from the start — you don’t need a licence, just curiosity.

The originator of the meet-ups is Michał SP5OSP, who called the first one in 2017 — as he writes himself, it was a completely spontaneous event. Since then the picnic has returned to the same place: a shelter with a fire pit, a clearing surrounded by forest and a car park between the trees.

As tradition dictates, the campfire was burning, sausages sizzled on the barbecue, and coffee and tea did the rounds at the tables. The organisers asked people to bring their own provisions; the fire and barbecue were waiting on site — and that was enough to keep it as lively under the shelter all day as a repeater on a Sunday evening.

Whoever was on the road called in. En route QSOs went on 145.500 MHz FM and via the FM Poland network repeaters: SR5MM in Mińsk Mazowiecki (438.950 MHz) and SR5RR “Iberyjska” in Warsaw (439.275 MHz), both with CTCSS 127.3 Hz.

Television from aircraft altitude — and much higher

The SKYEDGE team — Tomasz SP5LOT and Robert SQ5RB — set up the launch of a stratospheric balloon with a DVB-S2 digital TV transmitter. Beneath the gas-filled envelope hung a payload with the transmitter and an antenna, which, after just a few minutes of flight, had a better view of Mazovia than any mast in the area.

Balloons are a tradition in Celestynów. In 2018 a balloon from the Catholic Schools in Marki flew (RTTY, APRS and SSTV), in 2019 an RS41 sonde made it all the way to Belarus and its RTTY signal was received by 21 stations, and in 2021 two balloons went up at once. This year’s carried video — digital amateur television.

Why is it so impressive? Radio range grows with the square root of height. An antenna on the roof of a tall block (30 m) has a radio horizon of about 23 km. From an airliner’s cruising altitude (10 km) that’s already over 400 km, and from 30 km — which stratospheric balloons can reach — about 700 km; from the sky over Celestynów the radio horizon covers the whole of Poland.

• Formula — radio horizon d ≈ 4.12 · √h (d in km, h in metres, with standard refraction)
• 30 m → 23 km · 10 km → 412 km · 30 km → 714 km

Bench incident report

Time 13:25:00. The photographer raises the phone. In the frame are two radio amateurs and a problem known to anyone who has put up an antenna in the city: a terrain obstruction. The obstruction was me.

Marian SQ4MN — the very same who added a second support to his 70 cm Yagi because he can’t stand anything wobbling — sized up the situation at a glance. He didn’t argue about elevation angles or Fresnel zones. He simply stepped onto the bench.

Time 13:25:41. Photo ready. Marian is standing on the bench, with his arm around my shoulder — so he has both a mast and a guy, all by the book. The measurement, however, showed overshoot: for the first time in the history of our acquaintance it’s Marian looking down on me.

The whole operation took 41 seconds. No building permit, no housing association approval, not a single tool. Engineering in its purest form.

The Wanda crew

A sizeable crew came from the SR5W “Wanda” repeater — the same one we use for our daily chats from the EC Kawęczyn chimney. At the picnic there were, among others, SP5MAK, SQ5PIT, SQ5DAN, SP5XVS and SP5MOR, of course Marian SQ4MN, and me. Anyone who listens to Wanda in the evenings knows the conversations run long. By the fire they ran even longer — because there’s no repeater timeout at a campfire.

From afar you could see the banner of the Podlasie Radio Group SP4PGR: a white flag with a mast and a fir tree held, among others, by Marian, and in the group photo — in the front row. Caps with callsigns also flashed across the clearing, the simplest ham calling card, readable from the other end of the field.

• Wanda — SR5W, 145.750 MHz, CTCSS 127.3 Hz, the EC Kawęczyn chimney
• From Celestynów to Wanda — 30.5 km as the crow flies, bearing 319°

Dozens of callsigns on one table

On the table under the shelter lay commemorative badges — dozens of cards in transparent sleeves, arranged in rows like QSL cards at a club bureau. Each with the header “IX Mazowiecki Piknik Radiowy”, fields for name and callsign, and a forest silhouette at the bottom. The organisers prepared them based on registrations via the picnic website (sign-ups ran until 1 October), and those who hadn’t registered could fill theirs in by hand on site.

Such a badge is, in essence, a QSL card you wear on your chest. A glance is enough to know who you’re doing an eyeball QSO with — and that the calm chap at the barbecue is the operator behind a callsign you’ve heard on the repeater for years. There were also cards marked -XYL on the table, for hams’ wives, because the picnic has always been family-friendly.

After the event, the badge doesn’t go in the bin but in a drawer, next to the QSL cards. Next year it’ll come in handy to compare how many callsigns have been added.

The day’s best haul was brought in by the XYL

While under the shelter people were talking about propagation, foxes and balloons, my wife — in ham parlance XYL SQ5CBA — chose a band with no bandplan at all. She headed into the nearby woods and came back with a handful of mushrooms, straight from the forest surrounding the Forest Education Centre.

October in the forest is like autumn tropo on 2 m: you don’t know when it will open, but if you know where to look, you come back with your hands full. The report from that contact was short and unambiguous: 59, forest open.

That’s exactly how it is in Celestynów: some launch balloons, others listen to talks, others roam the woods — and in the evening everyone comes back with something to tell.