Monte de Arouca CT/BL-017 by CT7/EA2IF/P on 20/04/2015

When I got to the car after my activation of Serra de Freita CT/BL-004, I introduced the GPS coordinates of the next target, Monte de Arouca, a never activated before Summit which resulted only 18Km to the NorthEast from where I was. The drive was easy on a good benty mountain road and when the GPS told me I had reached my destination, I parked at the left side of the road, crossed the road and headed to the top of the mountain, which was only a very short hike of about 150m up to the trig point.

I installed my long wire horizontally with the end tied to a 2m tall branch of a distant eucaliptus tree and then coming parallel to ground to a rope I had tied to the top of the trip point. The last 1.5 meters went vertically down to my rig down on the ground inside my rucksack. It was a sort of odd inverted L 19.5m horizontal and 1.5 vertical.

As I did in my previous activation of the day, I also started this one on 30m CW.
TOP EA2 chaser Manuel, EA2DT was the first one to chase me. I asked him to raise a spot for me and so he did, as I soon got calls from several regular European chasers, and good friends of mine like Jorge - EA2LU, Alf - EA4CWN, Ric,- EA4ZK and Javier - EA2GM. Very nice to be chased by you guys!

After 30m CW, I QSYed to 20m SSB. This band/mode produced 9 QSOs, one of which was DX with AC1Z again, thank you! and other one was again a S2S with Nuno - CT2IUV/P, who had been waiting for me at SOTA CT/BA-012. Thank you very much!
When nobody else called in on 20m SSB, I QSYed back to 30m and 2 more QSOs were logged.
This is the complete log of this activation with 25 QSOs.

It was almost sunset, I was feeling really tired by that time and I still had to drive to Porto, where I was booked in a hotel near the airport. So I quickly packed up and took a few pictures before leaving.

Thanks a lot to all chasers and I’ll be looking forward to hearing you again son from another summit, which is where playing radio is indeed for me a real pleasure.

Best 73 de Guru

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Once and once again thank you.
Feel many of us were awaiting your signals to appear on the bands and certainly was worth the wait.

Karl

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Hi Guru!! was great to do both QSOs. Your signals were really good. That long wire worked perfectly. Your first activation in another country !! sure was exciting. Nice photos, as always! TNX!!

Thanks Javi. Yes, it was nice to be active on 30m again after some activations not doing so and not being able to contact you and other EA friends because I had been using and testing my new ECO mobile antennas mainly on 20m but also on 15m and 10m.
30m is a very nice band and I think I’m going to have to be back on that band again because I like very much the range of distances available when I activate on Sunday mornings.
Well, technically it wasn’t my first activation in a different country, but the second, as I activated a French summit last year from one of those double reference summits, which don’t exist anymore, at least in EA2 area. It was Mount Larrun, as we write at our side of the border or Mt. La Rhune, as written in France.
Best 73 and I’ll be looking forward to QSO with you again soon.

Guru