85th & 86th Mt. Ezkaba EA2/NV-119 by EA2IF/P on 31/10 and 01/11/2020

Activation Reports
1

I these days, after I’ve got back to full time work and I’ve got divorced, having the kids with me 50% of the time, I’m not having lately much time to prepare new unique SOTA expeditions and I’m mostly doing our local summit Mt. Ezkaba as a way to do some work out and play some SOTA as well.
I did it on Saturday, October 31st with just my Yaesy FT-470 and a dualband colinear mobile antenna. Being in light mode without a rucksack, the hike took me 32 minutes and I think it was the fastest I’ve ever done. I activated very shortly because I had my wrist watch in UTC and made the mistake of not having in mind that we changed to winter time last weekend and thinking the local time was still 2 hours more than UTC, so only made 2 QSOs on 2m FM and went QRT to descend and get back home for lunch. My 2 only chasers were Manuel @EA2DT and Jorge @EA2LU. Thank you mates!

Today, sunday, November 1st, I hiked with my usual rucksack and the hike took me 36 minutes, which is not too bad.
I wanted to setup with my 21.5m long wire in order to try to do some QSOs on 80m for the Challenge, but I was trying to setup the wire as an inverted vee, the wires got slightly tangled and when trying to untangle them, a bit too much effort was applied to the already extended telescopic fishing rod and one of the sections, which had slightly cracked some time ago and I had already repaired, didn’t resist the effort and broke. This made me change plans and I had to finally setup with a much shorter version of my telescopic fishing rod and my 10m long wire instead of the 21.5m long one.
I only worked 20m CW and I logged 90 QSOs in about 2h 45minutes, which included 4 S2S and 1 DX USA.
After QRT, I managed to put all the broken fishing rod back in and descend as I always do using it as my second walking pole. Once at home, I have managed to repair the broken fishing rod and although it’s got a bit shorter, it will still serve me well in a good number of activations.
I think I bought this fishing rod back in 2009 for 14€, so it’s really giving me a great deal of service for that money.
Thanks dear chasers for your calls and QSOs.
I’ll be looking forward to copying you all again soon from a summit.
73,

Guru

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2

Thanks for the report & QSO Guru.

73, Jarek

1 Like
3

A man after my own heart! All of my poles have a repair of one kind or another. :grinning:

It is great to hear that you are getting out, though of necessity only to the summit of Mt Ezkaba. That is certainly a brilliant total you made on 20m today. I was really pleased to work you on 24th October… yes, when you were on Mt Ezkaba.

Keep well and keep safe.

73, Gerald

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Hi Gerald,
I find highly rewarding whenever I get some of my toys repaired and its service life somehow extended. I can feel the same spirit in you.
My fishing rod has got so many repairs that I can’t remember now if they count 7, 8, 9 or more. This is a picture of today’s broken section.

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A closer look:
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Yes, it’s quite a big number of QSOs in a single band and mode, but bear in mind that I almost spent 3 hours CQing with no stop working every chaser coming back to me.
However, I can now remember a chaser with a weak signal who called me at the same time of some other chaser. I couldn’t get his callsign other than a /1 at the end, so I got back to him with ??/1 GM UR 559 or whatever report I sent him, then he came back to me sending me a 339 but not repeating his callsign. I asked him to repeat his callsing, but he never came back, so NIL, unfortunately. I think it was a LZ station, but I’m not sure.

So was I, Gerald. We haven’t had too many QSOs; my log shows you’ve chased me twice I have chased you only once. However, I immediately recognised your callsign and recalled your name when we had our last QSO on 24th October. I hope we’ll have many more QSOs in the near future.

And it looks like it’s going to be for me like it’s The Cloud for Tom M1EYP, which is not bad at all. I think it’s a real luxury having such a great mountain so close to home and I feel great after the physical exercise of hiking it up and down through the steep route called “camino del agua” I always take.
Camino del agua = Way of the water

Take care.
73,

Guru

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