Dear SOTA mates,
After an incredibly nice weather in the first part of the week, with sunshine and max temperatures of around 22 deg. C, Thursday reminded us that Winter season was not yet over and brought a lot of rain along with cold temperatures. We even had snow again on Friday and Saturday with temperatures just above freezing. I couldn’t activate Mt. San Cristobal on Saturday morning due to family duties but I had the chance to drive up to the Summit and take a few pictures of the Winter return.
Neither I could go actívate on Sunday morning due to family duties but, given that the weather was not looking too bad by lunch time, I luckily managed to get the planets aligned for an afternoon activation.
The choosen Summit was Iriberri, a close to my QTH one with many wind generators and a dirt road or track allowing cars to get to almost the very Summit.
Once there, I installed my 7m pole with a vertical wire inside it and 4 wire radials laying on the ground, This was my GP antenna.
The White thing you can barely see behind the pine trees close at the right hand side of the antenna in the photo, is the very tall trig point, but it is very much in the shade surrounded by trees, so I decided to set up a bit further in order to be away of the trees and get some sunshine,
I operated sitting on my new tripod seat with my plug&play rack between my legs inside the rucksack:
A closer look up where you can see the EVA rubber SOTA logo kindly provided by Ignacio EA2BD:
I had announced in the alert my intentions to work 20m and 30m, but after having worked 20m CW and SSB, I QSYed to 30m and realised that the windpower generators were making S8 QRM on all the 30m band, so I worked 15 and 12m instead.
I could also feel some QRM from the generators on 20m, but nothing to do with the intensity it had on 30m.
See how close the windpower generators were.
This is to the North:
This is to the South:
I started the activation on 20m CW, where I worked 35 stations in 27 minutes. DX were RV9DC and AC1Z.
When the pile up dried up, I QSYed to SSB and raised a selfspot. This time 23 QSOs were logged in 15 minutes. DX was KA1R.
Once nobody else called in after a few CQ calls, I QSYed to 30m, found the QRM and then quickly to 15m.
On 15m CW I logged 7 QSOs in 12 minutes, 4 of which were DX: N4EX, AD5A, KG3W and AC1Z.
I finally went to 12m and a new DX, N1EU, made it to the log with a very strong signal.
K4MF also called me twice and I gave him signal report but he never came back to me, so I didn’t log him.
Same problem happened with OM1AX on 15m. He called me 2 or 3 times and I always responded saying his callsign and signal report but he never came back giving my signal report, so the QSO was not logged.
SP9AMH was about to be in the same situation. He called me several times on 15m and I responded as many times as he called me, but he never came back until finally the very last good one. You finally made it!
Several unreplayed CQ calls on 12m and the temperature of 5 degrees with the sunset being very close, gave me the sign to pack up and leave before getting dark.
Thank you all for your calls and good company.
I’ll be looking forward to having more QSOs with you again soon.
Best 73 de Guru - EA2IF