Hello,
last Saturday 6th of May 2017 I activated Mt. Idokorri. Weather was excellent: sun and no wind.
I drove to the small village of Napal, where the road ends. There are few houses and most are closed and uninhabited.
The summit is close to the village towards North.
From Napal, an unpaved road goes up and then a junction right hand side starts the real ascent following a well marked forest track, surrounded by pinetrees.
The track follows the ridge and after 45 minutes you arrive to an open area that seems to be the summit but it is not. There is a geodetic vertex there but you have to get on to proceed to the real summit.
After another 15 minutes walking you get to the summit, marked by a mountain mailbox.
I stepped back a bit and set the End fed antenna as inverted vee.
For the activation I used my receintly aquired MTR-3B. I have prepared a cheap lunchbox to carry it along with my homebrew SWR meter (NoGaWatt kit) and my homebrew mini Paddle.
I prefer to use the meter to protect this tiny rig against a bad SWR. I have noticed that although I always use the same antenna since months, sometimes the SWR goes up a lot. Changing terrain characteristics?
Anyway, this meter is quite small and it is good to see the power out and reflected while sending.
Activation went well. I started on 30 meters and my call was soon picked and an automatic spot sent to Sotawatch; nice feature!
Afterwards I moved to 40 meter, There were other activators and could log S2S F6FTB/P.
I tried another S2S with F5AKL/P but unfortunatelly I couldn’t succeed.
According to my plan I qsyed to 20 meter and started calling. Again soon I worked some more chasers. At the end of the pile up I could work OK/G4OBK/P S2S; it’s always nice to greet another activators!
I then moved to 40 m and found a spot of LX/DL1ASA/P. It was a bit difficult this time but Thomas picked my /P and we could complete for another S2S.
I found a clear qrg and call for some minutes but I could just log EA2IF.
Time to close down and pack everything. I am very happy with the purchase of the MTR-3B, an excellent choice as for CW rig.
Descent just took 40 minutes and before leaving the village I approached to see a curious hill next to Napal, It is called “Peña de abajo”. This thin and wide rock is used by some climbers for training. There are several ways prepared with gear.
See you soon from another summit.
VY 73 de Ignacio.