My original intention was to activate this summit on Friday 29th but overdid things on a long walk the day before. This meant that the postponed activation on 30th coincided with the WWDX contest and a possible CME impact. At the time of writing, the latter has yet to arrive though.
Mark, M0NOM, activated this summit last week and I had a S2S with him, so this was a complete for me. As noted in his report, its an easy walk up from Playa Blanca.
Montana Roja from the beach-front in Playa Blanca:
Set up was no problem and unlike Mark’s activation I had virtually no wind - cloudless skies all morning and 26deg.
Operating position:
I started on 20m, hoping to emulate Mark with his VK success, but the contest scuppered that. QRM was so heavy that I was lucky to get the 10 QSOs I managed - all EU.
Moved to the quiet haven of 17m and had 28 EU QSOs including 2 S2S.
15m was as bad as 20m for QRM and I only got 2 EU ssb QSOs before I gave up and switched to CW. I managed 10 QSOs with my rather variable morse and all using 5w because I forgot to increase the power after doing an SWR check on my delta loop in the CW portion of the band - doh!
Moved up to 10m which was very busy with WWDX but not quite as bad as the other bands. Made 6 QSOs on ssb including a nice S2S chat with Stefan, HB9HCS/P.
I spent the rest of my activation on 17m, with a further 70 QSOs including another 6 S2S and NA in the shape of VE2JCW, AB4PP and N4GWK. M1EYP/MM was an interesting one on the Spirit of Adventure in the Med.
Grand total of 126 QSOs including 9 S2S, one of which was a really difficult one with OE6TTF/P, due to chaser QRM and QSB. Thanks to all as usual.
73 Simon GM4JXP
