I think it was last month of July when I wrote and published here my last activation report.
It’s been a while in which my SOTA activity has been reduced a lot, not only with less activating and chasing, but also with less time spent on this Reflector.
These are my activations since the one I did on July 2nd (Mt. Itzaga EA2/NV-029)
I activated a number of summits in EA1 area during my summer holidays, but once I got back home and into work routine, Mt. San Cristóbal on Saturday mornings is the only summit I’ve managed to hike and activate so far.
The reasons for this change are various, personal, family, work… and I can summarize them in a sentence: “life changes, life goes on”.
I hiked Mt. San Cristóbal this morning again, after not having done it for the last 2 weekends due to family commitments, on october 29th, and rainy weather on november 5th.It took me 36 minutes to get to the summit, one minute more than usual due to stopping for a little while to chat with a man I crossed on my way up who asked what was that I was carrying with me. It was the 20m mobile whip antenna along with a PVC blue tube and the coax cable passing through it. I explained it was an antenna for ham radio contacts and told him a bit about SOTA.
It was a bit overcast with low clouds down in the valley, but I found a great blue sky when I got to the summit and I was rewarded with the beautiful view to the NorthEast of the Pyrenees mountains already covered in snow. Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures. Sorry…
I immediately set up and started CQing on 14.063 expecting RBN-Hole to spot me on SOTAWatch. But after 3 or 4 unresponded CQ calls, I feared RBN-Hole might not be in service and I took my smartphone to send a selfspot with the help of the great SPOTmySOTA app.
The chasers quickly arrived and I had a lot of fun dealing with a very well disciplined pile-up.
It was very nice to QSO with so many SOTA friends.
All in all, I logged 19 QSOs in 14 minutes. This is the log:
Descent down to the car took me 23 minutes including a stop and short chat with another man I crossed on my way down…
Thank you so much for your calls and QSOs. I’ll be looking forward to copying you again soon.
Best 73,
Guru