[July 8, Bled/Kokos] This morning's meeting was for the purpose of drawing contest call signs and clarifying the rules issues from yesterday's meeting. The judges have decided that there is no listening during off-times, except for five minutes to see if you want to get back on the bands. If you choose not to get back on, the next time you turn the radio on, that automatically ends off-time. It was also decided that no rule would be made regarding how often you must sign your call.

Fifty-three envelopes were laid out on a table, and one by one the team captains were called to select an envelope, which was then immediately handed over to the team's referee.

Randy and I left for our QTH about noon, accompanied by a member of our host club and his daughter, a university student who spoke excellent English. Our referee, Uli, DJ2YA, was in another car with our host, Slovik. Although they wanted to take us on a tour of Ljubljana, the capital city and Sezane, their home town, we wanted to go up to the QTH and get set up. Our site was literally at the Italian border, about 8 miles west of Trieste. We took a long windy gravel road up to the top of the hill (674 meters) to our QTH, which was set in a small building with an operating room on one side and a small kitchen on the other. Sleeping quarters were up a metal ladder in a loft above the kitchen.

Setup went quickly, the only serious problem being RF from Randy's keyer on 80 meters. After throwing a bunch of ferrite at the problem, it was solved. It also turned out we couldn't record the contest on Randy's computer due to an overloading condition. When running the recording software on my computer in the background while using CT we had some errors pop up and decided not to record the contest.

Our hosts took us to dinner at a restaurant at the bottom of the hill, where we were joined for a few minutes by the local mayor. We had been eating mostly meat, so calamari was a welcome change of pace.

It was still very hot and humid, and the sleeping quarters were too hot to sleep in. Randy and I brought some thin foam pads down and slept fitfully on the floor, while Uli slept on some benches outside until 3 AM when he got cold and went up the ladder. Saturday morning of the contest our hosts brought breakfast and convinced Uli and Randy to go to Lipizca to see the famous white horses. I decided to stay and catch a few hours of good sleep, now that the loft had cooled off.