Dear all,
This weekend has been for me a very active weekend for SOTA.
On Saturday morning I activated again the mount San Cristobal (EA2/NV-119) right close to the Northern outskirts of Pamplona. I had very little time, as usual, so I just took the FT-23R and a vertical mobile antenna which I put on top of the wooden walking stick I use when hicking. I made just 6 QSOs between 10:52 and 11:00 UTC, then QRT.
Since my wife and my older daughter had to work at home today, Sunday, the first one preparing her teaching class for the university and the other studing for an exam at her school, I took my 2 younger kids to mount Iriberri (EA2/NV-116) this morning, which is pretty close to our QTH and I had never activated before. There’s a dirt road to the very summit, but SOTA doesn’t allow this and I parked the car at a not too long distance bearing in mind that I was going to try to get to the summit with a 3 year old boy and a 8 years old girl. Since I wasn’t sure of how much SOTA they were going to let me play, I decided to take only the FT-23R and the mobile GP antenna on my wooden stick again. I made 13 QSOs, 4 of which were S2S contacts. My daughter Lucia even transmitted her first CQ SOTA today and got Manuel - EA2DT back to her. She completed perfectly the QSO with the help of her dad. Thanks Manuel for your help, 
It was a very nice morning, sunny and relatively warm. The view in the horizon of the Pyrenees mountains covered with snow, the clear blue sky at the top and the green of the lower mountains and valleys closer to us at the bottom was fantastic.
In the sunny afternoon we went to another close to our QTH summit, which is Erreniega (EA2/NV-092). Since the morning experience of SOTA with 2 little kids wasn’t bad at all, I decided to take the FT-817 and the random wire GP antenna. I made 5 QSOs on 2m FM first. Then I QSYed to 12m and I had the pleasure of making 11 QSOs, 4 of which were with North America with very good signals. I had some difficulties to pick up OM1AX thanks to the very strong QRM of a persistent tuning signal right on our frequency. Thank you, whoever he was…
My last QSO on 12m today was with EA2BSB and he told me later that this was his very first CW QSO ever. What a joy and pleasure, Santi!
Then I QSYed to 20m and made 19 QSOs, 1 of which was with North America.
I want to mention that a german station called me as DL6AP/P. He gave me SOTA Ref. DM/NW-012, so it looked to me as a good S2S contact, but when I tried to enter this QSO to the database later this evening, I got a warning message saying that this was not a valid SOTA reference anymore, so I couldn’t log it as S2S.
After 20m, I switched off the FT-817, packed everything and prepared to get out of our summit shelter and descend not before making some last CQ SOTA calls on 2m FM, to which 3 more stations came back.
Finally we descended as it was 16:40 UTC, the sun was coming down and the wind was getting stronger and colder.
It was very nice for me to work these 3 activations and I want to thank every one for your calls and QSOs.
Looking forward to copying and working you soon again.
Best 73 and have a nice week,
Guru - EA2IF