FR/RE-006 Roche Ecrite - Reunion Island

I went yesterday June 3rd on Roche Ecrite 10pts summit on Reunion Island and 3rd in my collection.
Conditions on the air were not brilliant on top of my physical preparation that was not really done and I suffered a lot climbing mountain for over 4 hours (18 kms trip all together).

Announced myself on 20m but earlier band was pretty quiet by 08.30Z so moved to 15m when I could make few contacts on SSB (35W into EFHW) but the band went quiet again.

20m seemed to open but lot of trafic in Europe making QRM or simply did not pay attention to my weak signal.
I could contact only South Africa on 20m.

Activating summits on remote islands is not as easy as in Europe because all QSO are DX.

Left summit very late and came down on last half an hour in complete darkness hopefully using light from my cell phone.

73 Thomas de FR/F4HPX

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You’re a brave man Thomas! Not sure whether you managed to activate the summit or not but congratulations on the effort! Please let us know if you are planning any more - I’m sure there are many chaser stations that would love to help you out.

Kind regards, Mark. M0NOM

Hello Mark

I managed to log 3 qso on 15m with France, Spain and South Africa
and 1 qso on 20m with the same station in South Africa (ZS3Y) one hour later…

I believe the summit is activated but I think I needed 4 QSO on same band to get 10 points earned.
I got some injuries on the way back so not sure if I will activate next one but who knows.
I was planning the tallest FR/RE-001 3070m ASL next week but this is more difficult that anything else I did before.

73 Thomas de FR/F4HPX

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Hi Thomas,
All you need to qualify the activation is 4 QSOs. There’s no requirement for them to be on a same band/mode.
With what you described, I believe you qualified your activation with those 4 QSOs, even if you contacted the same ZS station on 2 different bands (15 and 20m).
Congratulations!
I hope you’ll quickly recover from your injuries.
Regarding the FR/RE-001, 3070m is something serious and you shouldn’t take any risks beyond your limits. I don’t know if it’s difficult to find another colleague to go with, but my advice is that you better go accompanied rather than alone.
Thanks for the report, the activation and I hope to be able to chase you one day.
73,

Guru

I think not; we certainly work on the principle that 4 different call signs are required. So I think - very bad luck for you Thomas. I too hope you recover quickly.

73,
Rod

Anyway

I am till now the only activator here so will see what can do next.
I am recovering…
And for Guru I was not alone - someone else was taking pictures :wink:
I learned long time ago that you do not climb such mountains alone.

73 Thomas

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