Hello dear SOTA mates,
This activation has been special for 3 reasons:
- it’s been my 100th activation, well indeed 100 & 101 as I put two references on air,
- now I reached (and passed) my 500 activator points,
- I took the chance to activate for the first time a summit in F country.
Chosen summit was Mt. Orhy. It is one of these rare summits lying in the very border with France that has two references: F/PO-137 & EA2/NV-003.
When I left home, very early as there is a 1h 30min drive, weather was very foggy.
Only when approaching the base of the summit the sky opened providing a magnificent view of Orhy Peak
Activation F/PO-137
First I activated the F reference. I had no mobile connection, but my dear friend George, EA2LU was waiting for me on VHF to provide assistance with spots.
I started on 20m SSB, and found a big pile of chasers there. In a quick run of 15 minutes I logged 35 stations.What a promising day!
I had previously announced I’d take the chance of this activation to make a tribute to all people who passed away in Paris on the 13th of november.
Therefore my exchange included RS plus the phrase “peace for the world” as a wish for all humans in the future.
Later I switched to 20m CW and again got a huge pile of 36 stations in 30 minutes. I’m afraid my CW rate is lower than my speech, hi. The exchange was RST + Peace.
Knowing there are avid chasers in the 10m challenge, I did a brief run in 10m SSB, with just 3 in the log, and 5 more in 10m CW. It seems conditions were long skip with Europe. Nevertheless one of the 10m SSB qso was EC2AG/P S2S; thanks Antonio!
Activation EA2/NV-003
I did a short break to relax and I moved the position of the radio next to the spanish downhill. Then I started the second activation.
This ref. is a 10 pointer summit while the F reference is 8 points. Nevertheless I logged fewer stations this time.
Here the numbers:
20m SSB: 25 qso, including S2S with S57D/P
20m CW: 20 qso, including S2S with HB9/PB2T/P,
10m SSB: 3 qso, including S2S with EC2AG/P again,
10m CW: 3 qso.
To finish, I run VHF for a while and chased 4 stations, being 3 S2S with EA2EBX/P, EA2DYS/P and EA2BSB/P.
I was expecting to find and have a S2S with my friend Guru, EA2IF/P who were alerted on a near summit. I scanned the bands up and down without a trace of him.
I asked by the handheld about that to EA2DYS/P, my only remote connection with the cluster and he together with EA2CSC looked for me on sotawatch and informed me that Guru was running on 30m CW.
Damn! I had only brought my 10-20-40 End Fed, without a tuner. I decided to try decreasing power and run there anyway.
He was loud at my end, and I called him several times with 500 mw and a hi SWR indication. No way!
I increased to 1w and this time it worked. So good we could complete the summits, Guru!
Just before leaving some beautiful pictures of nearest mountains of Pyrenees. What a lovely day for November!
Thanks to all chasers and activators. A very nice day with espectacular views of the Pyrenees.
Special thanks to EA2LU who joined me by the distance for a long time to spot me everytime I changed mode & freq: thanks a lot!!
Now, er… since I returned, I feel like half a goat… Is this a type of syndrome?
Vy 73 de Ignacio.
