I will be in Lanzarote from 22nd Oct - Nov 3rd and hope to activate a few summits as EA8/GM4JXP/P. I will be taking my 857 and delta loops for 20/17/15 and 10m. Will post alerts ahead of any activations.
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This is probably a daft question, but does Lanzarote count as Africa for the purposes of the Mountain Hunter award?
Have fun Simon!!
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Yes.
No, no, no, no, no. EA/G4JXP/P or EA8/G4JXP/P but not EA8/GM4JXP/P.
Take your 2m handy and you can work the other SOTA station who’ll be out there.
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This!
So it’s optional? You can use EA/ or EA#/ where # is the regional number? With my limited CW skills I wIll go for EA/ if we get to Spain next year. 
He’s saying that when you use a CEPT prefix you start your callsign with G not GM even if your home address is in Scotland.
Hi Andy,
Having now belatedly looked at the CEPT T/R 61-01 document it appears I should in fact use EA not EA8 as the prefix. However, could you please clarify why I cannot use GM? T/R 61-01 says this:
When transmitting in the visited country the licence holder must use his national call sign preceded by**the call sign prefix of the visited country as indicated in Annex 2 and Annex 4.
The OfCom licence document says this: Operation by the Licensee in CEPT countries -
unless instructed otherwise by the host country, use the Callsign specified in Section 1 of this Licence**after the appropriate host country Callsign prefix.
Section 1 of my licence states that my callsign is G#4JXP, with # denoting the regional secondary locater. So despite my station address being in Scotland I can’t use the GM prefix abroad? Hmmph.
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You can’t use GM because you are not in Scotland when you are in Lanzarote.
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You’ll only be able to use a Scottish callsign overseas after independance.
But on a more serious note you would use GW in Wales, GI in NI etc, eg IoM but just G in England and everywhere else. Your basic callsign is G4JXP and is modified or not depending where you are.
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Ha, another reason (not that I need any more) to vote Yes. 
. OK, so it will be EA/G4JXP/P. Good job I had this discussion before activating…doh!
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You can use EA8/ Simon.
Are you sure? That would seem logical, but T/R 61-01 Table 1 just lists Spain EA, with no mention of any regional prefixes.
I remember this being discussed before and there was something that said you could use EA or the EAn version. Of course, I cannot find that now.
He won’t be in England either. I cannot see Ofcom or the Spanish equivalent being bothered if he does use GM.
Well SOTA rules say it has to be a legal QSO and if you use the wrong call sign it’s not legal. The simplest reason to get it correct. It’s like the situation with Malta. Malta allows CEPT operation, you’d think you could go on as 9H/G4TGJ but you’d be wrong. You need to apply for a Maltese visitor call and you get a 9H5xxx call ISTR. Operation as 9H/G4TGJ is invalid so your SOTA QSOs would not count.
“the licence holder must use his national call sign”
It seems like the national call sign would not include the regional secondary locator, because the latter is regional, not national. But I don’t even pretend to understand the UK call sign system.
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Found it - May '17 On the Bands CEPT Operation. The linked document in that old thread doesn’t work but I found the current one -Licensing and basic info for visitor hams - Unión de Radioaficionados Españoles it seems EA8 is good to use as far as URE is concerned. In that case will the MT be happy for me to use EA8/G4JXP/P?
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Hi Simon.
Could you tell me approximate times of the activation. I am very interested in Africa and the window of possibilities between JA and EA8 is very narrow.
Good luck and 73