I wanted to activate Mt. do Oural this summer and after searching the information in my notebook, I realised I had forgotten to include the info for this summit, so I searched for my activation report of last year and found what I needed:
I woke up at 8 o’clock this morning and headed to the Lat./Long coordinates of the parking spot and start point.
The drive was an absolute pleasure, particularly the last about 20 Kms in the deep rural Galicia in eucaliptus forests. This picture can give you an idea of what I was seeing:
Eucaliptus is not an autoctonous tree of this region. They were brought from Australia and they have now conquered the region mainly due to its very rapid grow.
After parking at exactly the indicated spot, we (our dog LUcho and I) started the hike.
See how much fun Lucho was having:
The hike took us just 12 minutes. Here we were nearly reaching the summit.
As soon as the summit was reached, I set up using exactly the same tree I used last year to tie my fishing rod to.
Instead of on ground, the bottom end of my fishing rod layed on one of the tree’s branches as this allowed the top end to be about 1m higher. Doing this put an extra effort to the young and still too flexible tree, so I installed 2 guying ropes to avoid too much bending of the tree.
Far in the distance there is the Estuary of Betanzos but the air was too hazy over there so the visibility was very poor.
This is a sun tanned Guru on the summit:
And this is Lucho taking some rest:
I had alerted for 10h00 utc but I arrived to the summit much earlier, so I editted my alert and changed its ETA accordingly.
I started the activation trying to chase an activator on 17m CW, but I had difficulties tuning my endfed antenna and had to complete the first S2S QSO of the day with 4 bulbs in the SWR meter of my FT-817ND.
After this first S2S QSO, I went to 10m CW and proceeded with my plan to activate on all bands. The good thing of using the multiband endfed antenna with an ATU (antenna tuner) is that I managed to work on 8 different bands without having to lower or touch the antenna at any time. No links, no traps, just 9 or 10m of wire as a sloper to a 9:1 un-un and 7m of a horizontal counterpoise wire elevated about 1m from ground.
10m CW produced 4 QSOs.
I didn’t call CQ too many times after the last chaser as I wanted to work many bands and couldn’t afford spending too much time calling with no responses. So I QSYed to 12m CW.
There I logged 2 QSOs. I could have logged 2 more QSOs with PA0B and DK7ZH but they called me, I sent them their signal reports, but they never came back to me, so NIL (Not In Log), unfortunately.
On 15m CW I logged 8 QSOs and then QSYed to 17m CW once there were no more chasers.
I managed to tune the antenna perfectly this time on 17m, unlike at the start of the activation, when in the rush of trying to chase the S2S with Paul DL6FBK, I couldn’t find the right ATU set-up. This run on 17m CW let me log 3 QSOs. With no more chasers replying to my CQ calls, I said it was time to give the summit to my SSB chasers, so I QSYed to 20m SSB, where I logged 11 QSOs, one of which was a S2S with Bernd DL2DXA/P.
My QSY to 20m CW produced 7 QSOs, the last of which was the DX of the day with Bob AC1Z in NH.
After 20m, I QSYed to 30m and I logged 2 QSOs there. I could have also logged QSO with Lothar DL3HXX because he called me, I copied him and sent him my signal report, but he never came back to me, so NIL, unfortunately.
After 30m I QSYed to 40m CW where, with no little difficulties, I managed to complete a S2S QSO with Thomas DL1ASA/P. Then I QSYed to a clear frequency and called CQ for some minutes with no takers at all.
The Sun was pretty high by that time and my poor black dog Lucho was having quite a bad time in the nearly 32 degrees C of temperature not being able to find some fresh shade, so I was about to QRT when I thought about trying 6m.
So I called on 6m for a while and got chased by 2 EA stations, being one of them in the Canary Islands, which is no doubt the second DX of the day with a 1816Km distance between our respective locators.
I would have liked to keep calling on 6m for a longer time but I was really worried for Lucho in the heat as his tongue was fully out and his breathing too rapid, so I QRTed, packed up quickly and descended in about 11 minutes.
This is the log:
This is the S2S log:
This a sweaty Guru once arrived to the car:
All in all, 41 QSOs in the log, 3 of wich were S2S.
After working on 10, 12, 15, 17, 20, 30, 40 and 6 meters, I managed to log QSOs on all of these bands. Mission accomplished!
I enjoyed very much this activation.
Thank you very much dear chasers for your calls and QSOs.
73,
Guru
