Hello dear SOTA mates,
I wanted to do a two-summits activation near the Pyrenees now that we are close to end summer and weather tends to degrade progressively.
I was following the weather forecast carefully as there were some thunderstorms in the last days. Saturday looked fine and I agreed with Jorge, EA2LU, to run a joint activation.
We planned going to Mt. Ori and Mt. Abodi, close to the border with France.
These summits are nice and instead of a full description of the activation I will just share here a brief summary of our logbook and some pictures that describe sufficiently the beauty of these mountains and its surroundings.
Activation date: Saturday 15th September 2018.
- Summit #1: Mt. Ori, EA2/NV-003 (2017 m a.s.l.)
When we left our QTH in Pamplona, early that morning, the first sun rays showed the weather was good towards East, as forecasted.
The mountain is a huge barrier towards France. This is the South face while aproaching by car:
Soon after the starting of the hike the beauty of the Pyrenees showed up:
This mountain is very popular and it is frequent to see a lot of people in the summit. We separated from the trig point to be more relaxed and to avoid any trouble with our wire antennas. Cantabric Sea is towards the far end:
Summary of the activation:
EA2LU: 46 qso and 4 S2S, all HF.
EA2BD: 19 qso (7 on VHF) and 6 S2S. I was especially delighted with the S2S, First I had qso with EA2DCA/P and EA2DNO/P on EA2/SS-004 (123 km far away). I reduced the pwr on my VHF handheld to 100 milliwatts and Alberto got down to 1/2 w, and we could work both ways withoout any trouble! When you are that high the coverage is really impressive.
I also had a qso with EB2FDT/P in EA1/CT-081 (193 km) and we could log with ease working with just the handheld and a short 1/4 wave whip.
When on 14 MHz I was called by Antonio EC2AG/P, very nice to log him at EA1/CT-100 (221 km away) on this band!
Just before dismantling the antenna I logged on 20m CW 9A6CW/P and LZ1GJ/P
We had planned to activate for one hour so that we could descend and move to the second summit of the day.
This is Jorge going down with the aid of a short via ferrata in a steep area:
- Summit #2: Mt. Abodi, EA2/NV-013 (1533 m a.s.l.)
Abodi is just a lower summit opposite to Ori. This is Abodi as seen in front of us while going down from Ori:
And this is us in the very summit, with the mountain box:
The summit is very flat and we found a useful wooden post that Jorge used with his long 10m telescopic mast to install his End Fed Half Wave fully inverted L.
Little breeze on the summit allowed us to try this configuration:
Yep, Jorge sat comfortably and his pile up soon started.
I moved, as usual, further meters appart to install my station using my 5m pole to hold my EFHW antenna inverted Vee.
Jorge did 36 qso and 4 S2S.
I had 9 qso and no S2S, although heard HB9CRY/P very strong on 40m SSB.
While I was dismantling I took a picture of a couple of mushrooms I had in front of me. It seems they are “Lycoperdun perlatum”, but I’m not an expert and they remain on the grass:
I can’t afford but posting again the Pyrenees range picture before closing this report.
Thank you very much for your QSO and see you soon from another one.
73 de Ignacio
