Mrs. FMF came in to the shack and said “Can we go to Nazaré?” and I asked where it was and she said “Portugal on the coast, they have huge waves that people surf, it looks lovely.” And so I did a bit of digging and found where it was and checked if there were any SOTA summits near. There were enough for a family holiday so I set about organising our 1st foreign family holiday that wasn’t a package deal. This is a bit scary because I have plenty of experience buying plane tickets and hiring cars and finding cheap hotels for just me, something for the family for a week was a new experience. Anyway EasyJet fly Edinburgh <> Lisbon although flights are early morning we got up a 3am to get to Edinburgh for 4.15 to check in and clear security and we checked out on our return at 4.30am to get to Lisbon in time (especially as hire car return was not too obvious when I drove the return trip on Google earth!) It turns out I found a fab hotel (the AC could produce ice cubes almost, the wifi was fast, 125 channels on TV 75% in English, the breakfasts were phenomenal and the room was just perfect with posh bed linen and lovely fluffy towels.)
So we had a wonderful family holiday and I tagged on some SOTA. I could have done more but i had just one day for me SOTAing whilst Mrs. and Miss FMF ran up my credit card bill at the poolside bar and pampered themselves. I located 5 reasonably easy summits, one is a drive on but 100km away. The two I did were about 50km by road from the hotel. Not too far away as I wasn’t missing breakfast and was on holiday not on a mad activating rush. If I’d have skipped breakfast and pushed myself I could have bagged 3 but hey, that’s a reason to return to Portugal!
I’ve done plenty of activations outwith the UK involving flying and airport security and Lithium batteries and lugging heavy FT817s or lighter KX2s. It becomes a drag having it in your carryon bags and getting past security. This time I was using my QCX setup designed specifically for these situations. 20m QCX mini, 30m QCX mini (does 40m at reduced power), 5m travel pole, trapped EFHW (resonant 20/30/40) but with AA5TB style match unit will match on 40/30/20/17/15/12/10m, not that we had so many bands. Power is 3x 18650 cells that get taken through security inside a USB power pack. Everything bar the 18650 power packs were in the checked luggage, so I had my laptop, psu, USB power packs, camera and drugs in my carryon, noticeably lighter than normal.
Serra de Mendiga CT/BL-020
Hey it wasn’t meant to rain. Quite a few heavy showers on the drive out and a black sky as I climbed up from the coast. Bottoms! I parked at 39.53078,-8.79144 (IM59om57) and started what sounded like a few hundred dogs barking in the farmhouses 
TNF Hedgehogs on and away I went. There was the odd spot of rain but I was at the top in no time as it’s a mighty 55m ascent and 1.2km walking. 
I looked for somewhere to setup and finally found a walled off field near the true summit. I didn’t really want to setup on the tracks as my Portuguese is limited to “Cerveja por favor” and “Obrigado” and didn’t want to have to explain what was going on.
Away onto 20m and I worked 18 stations, EA2, SM, ON, DL, EA3, MW, G, F, EA1, GM, OK, S5, HB9 and 2 on 30m EA4 and GI4ONL. Victor texted me saying he couldn’t hear anything of me on 20 so I gave him the QRG on 30m and it was an easy QSO. 30m and 40m seemed very odd, quite dead but maybe being 1800km South of GM, D layer absorbtion coming up to midday was much worse ?
First view from the top. Hey, what is the dark cloud swirling over me? I’m in CT not GM? Amazing smell, wild Mountain Thyme everywhere.
Ciclope. This is part of an automatic wild fire monitoring system. The cameras are always scanning and moving. Feels very George Orwell at first!
Equipement, L to R: AA5TB match box (switches select 21/24 turns and 3/4 turns), SWR meter (Kanga kit plus a meter from eBay), AKG headphones, 30m QCXmini, 20m QCXmini, GMT clock, Palm paddle, 3x18650 cells, main Android phone, burner Android phone, box of junk (pens, leatherman, screwdriver, insulating tape), Decathlon super lightweight sit mat.
5m pole, EFHW as inverted sloping L.
After many unanswered CQs, I packed up and set off back to the car. There I started the dogs barking whilst I had a good drink and a banana and half a bag of trailmix (sultanas and nuts). After that it was off to the next summit.
Vale Grande CT/BL-018
This was probably about 20mins drive away. I parked in a pull off near the track that leads to the summit. There are plenty of masts at the top hence the good track. You could drive it an F1 car. I wasn’t sure if it was legal to do so and as I was eating well, the exercise was most welcome 
It was still dark skies but was meant to get better so I dumped the waterproof and just kept the umbrella.
Half way there and the sky didn’t look good… should have brought the waterproof
First view of the towers at the summit…oh there’s plenty! And what’s moving?
So I kept on plodding and soon was at the top and admired the many towers. Some kind of ATC site by the shapes and styles of antennas and everyone else has jumped in with stuff too.
Lots of vertical omnis on this one.
Looks like some kind of UHF link and that dish looks like a Ubiquiti 2.4/5GHz Wifi link.
So that’s what was moving… a damn RADAR antenna :-(. Slotted waveguide scanner in a radome. Probably L-band (23cms) by the size of it. Andrew Corp dishes facing me on probably around 4/7GHz, the others are 11/13GHz etc.
Yet another impressively large Portuguese trig point.
It’s a big scanner!
I’m getting old and whilst I don’t mind sitting the near field of my own antennas on SOTA or contesting, I think I’ve getting towards having had my fill of proper QRO RADAR RF. I wasn’t going to stay too long up here. So I found a nice place to setup in the Mountain Thyme and off I went again.
Same antenna as before. The WX is gorgeous this way Must the RADAR making the clouds!
So another 17 QSOs on 20m EA2, F, I, EA1, HB9, ON, DL & G, just 2 on 30m, EA1 and Eric F5JKK and 3 on 40m EA2, EA7 & EA4.
Surprisingly with all those antennas there was no crud on 20/30/40m but the QCX has a 200Hz audio bandwidth so maybe I didn’t hear it. What I did hear was two very LOUD clicks every time that damn scanner swept over me. I wonder what the ERP was ?
There was a thread on how to rig an antenna. So here’s how I do things with 3 guys and yoke.
A tent peg (edn marked in yellow) stuffed into the rocky soil. (EU44 size shoe for scale). 3 of these at 120degs apart.
Yoke made from a piece of scrap plastic. This was made in 2006 and is still going strong. I have several for different sized fibreglass/carbon poles. I takes under 5 mins to deploy and have the pole self supporting.
Another view of the lightweight holiday SOTA setup.
Of course by the time I’d packed up and was on my way back to the car, the WX was glorious. 24C and a nice breeze.
And more nice countryside.
My faithful steed for the trip. Toyota claim this is a 138bhp 1.8L hybrid, it couldn’t pull a greasy stick out of a dog’s whatsit Still it was quiet and comfy and the AC worked. The hire company was a Portuguese company that provides service for Enterprise in CT-land. Well you pay for Enterprise service and don’t get it… miserable sods wanted €9 extra per day to make the GPS work. Blow that, I had 25GB of data on my phone so Mrs. Google Maps did the honours for nothing ! Parked at 39.53587, -8.85615 (IM59nm78)
Anyway, both of these were huge fun. Activating in a new country is just a buzz. On top of that I drove home in the sun listening to some laid back acid-jazz Bossa Nova with some girl singing in Portuguese sounding as sexy as sexy is. Back to the hotel, shower, find Mrs and Miss FMF and then some cold beer. What could be better?
I’ve only been to Faro airport for 45mins before whilst my plane refuelled. I found Portugal to be the most splendid of places. Everyone local was just so nice and helpful and everyone spoke the most beautiful English. A lot of the people I met spoke English better than the British in the UK can 
Driving was a different matter… my experience of mid-morning Lisbon traffic and roundabouts has scarred me for life. It nearly put me off returning.
But then there’s this:
and this:
and this:
and this:
And just so much fabulous food
No activation report is complete without the latest attempt at arty photography.
I really can’t wait to get back.
.
