Today I took the chance of doing an afternoon activation of Baratxueta, and after a quick lunch, I headed to this nice summit, 45 minutes drive apart from home.
Ascent is short through a beautiful beech forest, now in bright & fresh green colour.
It was pretty hot, abt 30C and there was no wind in the summit.
Today I deployed a Doublet antenna to be able to do quick band changes with my Z817 autotuner. In the very summit a group of goats looked at me and approached little by little. I used my mountain sticks to chase them out but they were stubborn, and when one started chewing part of my antenna I decided to jump over the fence and find a safer point.
When I started the FT817 I heard a lot of static noise from a thunderstorm; not really in my area but somewhere around anyway.
That made the HF activation today really difficult.
After a short number of qso in 20m SSB including a S2S with GM4COX/P I moved to 20m CW. Some chasers requested several times to correct their calls, even though they were right in my reports, therefore I felt that there was severe QSB and the noise was also causing troubles to be copied all right.
I copied NE1SJ working SOTA, but although I tried several times to work him he didn’t copy me. A pity, but the contact in such conditions was also difficult at my end, with strong sudden crashes making difficult to copy the full qso.
I did some more qso in 30m & 40m CW and at the end the WX was changing, becoming more windy and dropping the temperature down. I decided to end the activation but I saw a spot from DL8DBW/P and we completed our S2S.
Thanks to all chasers and the S2S as well. It’s always a relief when you chase another Sota and wait to hear the other activator catching you among the chasers…
In reply to EA2BD:
Well done dear Ignacio.
Fun story with the goats trying to eat your wires!
I have my station at home partly dismantled but even though I managed to chase you on 30m CW from home and later on 2m FM from my car.
It’s good that the storm didn’t finally chase you,
I hope you’ll be able to chase me tomorrow when I’ll be activating new unique Uroa Mt. together with Juan Carlos - EA2EEB.
Best 73 de Guru - EA2IF
Ignacio: Well done! Here was a bit risky because of the storm too, I couldnt hear you because scratches. Better luck next time. An for goats, better end feds… more volts on the end
Guru:
Tomorrow I’ll try (very stormy here also) to be at Oiz EA2/BI-009, to try S2S with Alberto at Hiru Erregen Mahaia EA2/NV-001. It’s a rare opportunity, and I hope Alberto to achieve it! We’ll try together as well, ok?
In reply to EA2CW:
Dear Mikel,
A not ham friend invited me last week to go with him and some other non ham friends of him to Hiru Erregen Mahaia next June 28th and I accepted as it was a great opportunity to reach the highest summit in our NV area for the second time in my life (1st one was many, many years ago) as well as activating EA2/NV-001 for the first time for me.
That’s a long hike of about 7 hours total going up and back down.
I don’t know yet details but you are welcome if you want to join us. I guess we’ll be leaving home by about 7 AM.
Let me know if you feel like coming…
Best 73 de Guru - EA2IF
In the very summit a group of goats looked at me and approached
little by little. I used my mountain sticks to chase them out but
they were stubborn,and when one started chewing part of my antenna
I decided to jump over the fence and find a safer point
Hello Ignacio
something similar happened to me last year on a summit in Austria. I was just setting up my 10m mast and was concentrating on balancing the mast, when I suddenly saw from the corner of my eye that a cow has approached and has begun to chew the end of my dipole wire. Immediately I tried to shy the cow away but then I got a little bit panic, when I realized that the cow already swallowed a length of the cable. So I pulled very carefully the cable out of the cow. Fortunately the wire was very strong and did not tear off. So no harm has been caused to the cow; only to me because I had to use most of my drinking water for cleaning my dipole wire
Now I’m always very carefully watching out for any animals nearby the activation zone
Now I’m always very carefully watching out for any animals nearby the activation zone
The first dipole I tried to construct in my garden fell victim to a fox. I went indoors to fetch something, leaving the wire stretched across the lawn, and came back a few minutes later to find the wire in many pieces. I guess the fox couldn’t resist what must’ve looked like the longest earthworm in history…
