I apologize for the mess created on SOTAwatch regarding the reference of the summit I was activating this afternoon.
These 3 spots were displayed on SOTAwatch during my activation and just one of them was correct. The spot from Manuel EA2DT was correct and the other 2 spots by RBNHole were wrong.
Let me explain why this happened:
A few minutes before leaving home, I raised an Alert for the summit I thought I would activate (EA2/NV-151), but something seemed to be not working on either SOTAwatch or my internet service and I never saw my Alert listed on SOTAwatch Alerts. I refreshed my screen a couple of times and my Alert never was displayed on SOTAwatch Alerts, so I finally decided to leave home without having raised an Alert.
While driving my car in the streets of Pamplona, I changed my mind and decided to activate NV-119 instead of NV-151.
To make things worse, I happened to setup in a different area of the summit today because I wanted a better takeoff to the NorthWest in order to favour DX contacts with NA, but, unexpectedly, my phone didn’t have internet access in that new area of the summit and I was blind regarding SOTAwatch Spots and Alerts and I was obviously unable to selfspot. I tried to selfspot through SMS but it didn’t seem to work.
I fear there will be many chasers having the wrong summit reference or even having logged me twice on the 2 references at different times, because I found some chasers calling me for a second time.
Due to my inhability to selfspot or checking SOTAwatch today, my activation strategy changed to a 20m CW monobander.
My 1st QSO was logged at 14h24z and the last one at 15h43z.
In this time, I logged 37 QSOs, 5 of which were DX from the USA states of Tennessee, Montana, California, North Carolina and Massachussets. All the others were from Europe except for one from Israel (Asia).
This was the view to the NorthWest from my operating position:
And this was me at the end of the activation:
It was 1 hour and 20 minutes on air plus the setting-up time in which despite my 5 layers at the top, my 2 trousers and my 2 hats, I finished shivering and cold, pretty cold.
A constant wind from the North was blowing all the time and when I got back to my car parked not far below the summit, the car thermometer outside temperature reading was 2.5 C.
Believe me, I can’t even imagine how our colleagues in the Urals can spend the night camping at -30 C.
I’m very sorry for the summit reference mess and I hope you all will correct your logs.
It was great being chased by all of you, dear chasers, particularly those in so many distant places accross the Pond.
73,
Guru