Thanks everyone for the chases over the last few days out in Gran Canaria!
I’d originally pondered the idea of a quick trip to EA8 to add Africa to my collection of continents activated - I’d already met the 20 associations target for the Globetrotter badge, but needed the fifth continent.
On mentioning it to George, M1GEO and Dan, M0WUT, it felt like a small group trip would be more fun than a solo attempt, and it definitely was.
Ryanair’s flight times from Stansted gave us four decent length days on the island, but did mean seeing 3am from both ends of the day on Thursday morning and Sunday night / Monday morning respectively…
We started by heading straight from the airport to EA8/GC-001 - an easy drive-on summit. This proved fortunate, as one of the dipoles I’d bought turned out to have a short in the BNC - so being able to run back to the car to grab tools, then a spare antenna, was a definite win.
Calling CQ on 20m CW @ 10W resulted in zero RBN spots, which was an ominous sign, but switching to 100W of SSB from George’s FT-891 delivered the required QSOs, with many thanks to those who worked all three of us as we passed the mic around until we’d all qualified.
We quickly learned that just because your next destination is only a few km straight-line distance, doesn’t mean it’s quick to drive there - steep mountain roads with tight turns and blind bends are the order of the day in EA8.
Friday bought another roastingly hot day - our AirBnB host’s warning to “bring warm clothes” certainly turned out to be unnecessary - and EA8/GC-006 followed by EA8/GC-003, both pleasant walks. For the former, we all once again stuck to SSB, but for the latter, Dan and I succeeded with the 10W of CW that we normally favour.
Saturday’s target was EA8/GC-009. We knew this one was a longer walk, but the Sotl.as summary ascent figure proved particularly inaccurate on this - you end up walking across three smaller peaks to get there, leading to around 600m of cumulative ascent on the round trip despite only ~100m altitude difference between the parking spot and the summit. Coupled with mid-thirties temperatures and intense sunshine, it was definitely a warm walk, but with some stunning views along the way. Some excellent ice cream in Tejeda helped with the recovery.
Finally, on Sunday we headed up EA8/GC-026 - only a single point, but as ON7DQ noted in his report, the challenge was in the drive rather than the walk! Google Maps unhelpfully directed us up a street that was inches wider than the car, then turned into a footpath, requiring an equally nail-biting back-track.
When we got to the top, we were greeted with S9 noise on 20m. Dan and I managed to work through it on CW, but it was clearly going to be a show-stopper for SSB, so we took the dipole for a walk, tracked it down to the CCTV cameras, and moved ourselves away from them into the overflow (gravel) car park, making life much better. Sorry to anyone we didn’t copy early in the activation.
After a quick obligatory trip to the coast to remind ourselves why we enjoyed radio more than sunbathing, it was back to the airport, and then home - via a little excitement on arrival as police officers boarded the plane to escort two sets of passengers into their care!
73 for now,
Rob M0VFC, Dan M0WUT and George @M1GEO
