Messy 93rd Mt. Ezkaba EA2/NV-119 by EA2IF/P on 18/03/2021

Activation Reports
1

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.

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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).

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This was the view to the NorthWest from my operating position:

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And this was me at the end of the activation:

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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.

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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

5 Likes
2

There’s no rejected message I can see. That says either your message never got sent by your phone or your service provider never sent it to the SMS spotter provider.

I had to visit the office today to move some ethernet cables about a switch and reboot a stuck server. Well it’s not a server just a desktop with a big graphics card, there’s a reason why servers cost more than user computers, remote management interfaces and the ability to run 24/7 for months on end. Anyway it was 16C according to my car, it doesn’t get much above 20 in the middle of summer! Quite a contrast between here and Northern Spain.

That FT23 must be getting on for 35+ years old now and still going strong :slight_smile:

1 Like
3

Well, thanks for making the trip ! I could just barely hear you with
both preamps on, noise blanking on, BOSE earphones… !
Tnx for the QSO, Guru.

73
John, K6YK

1 Like
4

Thanks, John, for your feedback.
When I try to chase activators with an extremely weak signal, it often works better for me switching the NB and Preamp OFF, reducing the RF gain to reduce background noise and increasing AF gain.
This was just my experoence and perhaps this doesn’t work for you with your rig. I guess you know what works best for you, as you successfully chased me today.
Cheers,

Guru

5

I’m not sure but I’m fearing the telephone number I used today is not the one I gave you quite long time ago for the SMS spotting system. I’ll PM you to clarify this.

The temperature in Pamplona was 5 C when I descended. Pamplona is 450m a.s.l. and the Mt Ezkaba summit is 900m a.s.l. The Atlantic Ocean coast line is about 100Km NorthWest. On the other hand your QTH is probably not too high a.s.l. and not too far away from the coast line.
I’ve never confirmed this information but I heard long time ago that Pamplona is the Spain’s capital city with more hours of cloudy sky in the whole year. I often believe it’s true… When the thick clouds cover the sky and the sunlight can’t warm the ground up, it gets cold. This is how we have to live here more often than many believe :slight_smile:

This HH is like a tank. It’s true that I don’t use it much, but it never lets me down.

Cheers,

Guru

6

Hi Guru, great photos, have you hurt your thumb :smiley:
You look well also.

73 de Geoff vk3sq

7

Hi Geoff,
All of us in my family have our thumbs like that and I was told that just about 5% of the people in the World have their thumbs like this :slight_smile:

Cheers,

Guru

8

Just Joking Guru, my son when he was young would do that when he hurt his thumb, seeing yours, I immediately thought of that.

73 de Geoff vk3sq

1 Like
9

OK thanks for the advice, Guru. Well, I am blessed with no noise level here, otherwise the preamp wouldn’t help. I can hear really weak signals and I try each thing to see if it helps or not. Some of the signals, i have to “rock the dial” back & forth just to see if there is a change in the background noise! Then I go to work with filters/noise limiting/preamp, etc. to get it to where I can actually hear dots & dashes!
I used to do a lot of VHF work with real weak signals and it was good practice for pulling the really weak ones out.
73
John K6YK

1 Like
10

Those old hand-helds are good stuff! All mine are old and still working just fine! And it seems possible to find batteries for all of them, too!
K6YK

11

A few pictures taken in rural areas of Navarra EA2/NV today:

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