Motivation
Jorge EA2LU and I agreed on a joint activation looking to work some chasers or activators from NA.
Here in EA, most of our activations are frequently done during morning time, between 10:00 to 12:00 utc and we usually get this way a lot of calls from Europe.
This time we delayed purposely our activation time to start by 15:30 (midday after lunch) trying to get the window open towards North America. Did this strategy worked?
Driving directions
- Exit Pamplona towards France for 16 kilometers (road N-135)
- Just after the village of Larrasoaña take deviation right towards Errea for 7 kilometers (road NA-2337)
- Once in Errea, park and start the walk.
Climb
- Trail from the village is about 2,3 kilometer long (one way).
- Height gain is about 200 meters.
Some reamaining snow patches on the way up.
This is an easy climb at first but the last part is a bit uncomfortable once you enter the forest in the last part. There the ground is covered with brambles plant without a clean path. The trousers stick with them frequently.
When you are very close to the summit you don’t view the trigpoint easily. You need to go around the summit to find a way through the plants and trees to access to the very trig point.
Once there the brambles make it hard to deploy the aerials.
Activation
As usual, Jorge and I separated as much as possible to avoid mutual interference.
• Date: friday 15th of February 2019.
• Stations:EA2LU station: KX2 + EFHW antenna / EA2BD station: LNR LD-5 + EFHW antenna.
Jorge started calling CQ on 20m CW as soon as his station was ready. The plan worked fine for him and logged 6 of the stations from USA (W2WC, N4EX, KG3W, N1AW, AC1Z &; K3TCU) on 20m CW. His complete log was 37 stations between 40, 30 & 20m, all CW.
In the other hand I logged 14 stations. My very first qso was OK2PDT/P S2S on 7 CW. It wasn’t easy to complete the qso, but thanks to Jan’s patience he could get my callsing and reference. Very glad to have this as a starter!
The next one was HB9BQU/P S2S on 7 SSB, great Hans, thanks a lot.
After logging some more on 7 SSB I moved to 14 SSB and later 14 CW but unfortunatelly I couldn’t log any NA.
We dismantled and descended talking about the activation.
Thanks all chasers for your calls.
VY 73 de Ignacio
