The airport authority at home (XYL) game a slot to take off early on this Saturday morning for my first activation of 2015.
I choosed Mt. Alitzako Malkorra, which is the one I had initially planned for the joint activation with Ángel - M0HDF and his XYL Eva - M0HJV, but we finally couldn’t make due to my work commitments for the day they were passing by.
I got up at 5h45 utc and drove the 37Km from my QTH to the small and high a.s.l. Little village of Goldaratz. Temperature was around zero or just 1 or 2 degrees below, but the sky was absolutely clear.
See how many traces of planes were crossing the sky when I got to Goldaratz just before sunrise.
I drove a couple more Km on a dirt road and finally parked at its side after having made U turn to have the car beaming home. I crossed that gate and started the hike following the track I had downloaded from Wikiloc.
Soon I had to pass a barbed wire fence with the help of a swimming pool ladder gently placed there for that purpose.
Following some of the pictures I took during the ascent.
All ground was covered with sleeves.
The beech trees forest is just magnificent.
I wasn’t expecting much snow today but I started to find some and this made fear that I may have to suffer another activation standing on the snow.
After an hour hike, we got to the Summit.
There’s just a small cairn in it.
The Summit is full of trees so having good views from it is not easy. This one is to the SouthWest.
This one is to the NorthEast
With the help of my camera zoom and a bit of searching for a good spot, I managed to take a couple of good ones:
Well, with so many trees in the Summit, I had no problems to find the way to get my pole in vertical position. My pole just got attached to a tree,
Furthermore, I used for the first time today a kind of plug&play rack that I’ve been preparing these Christmas holidays.
Unfortunately one of the antenna PL-259 connections gave problems and this made me waste some time trying to find out and fix the problem. I finially got it provisionally solved, started the activation on 30m CW and managed 25 QSOs in 17 minutes. Some other stations started to transmit very close to my frequency and my tiny QRP signals were not copied or copied with big difficulties by the chasers, so I QSYed 1Kc down and started CQ again, since I had no replays I looked at SOTAWATCH on the smartphone and I saw that Antonio EC2AG/1 was activating on 20m SSB so I QSYed to try the S2S QSO with him.
It took me a while but I could finally make it thanks to a nice colleague which warned Antonio about a Summit to Summit calling (myself)
Once I was on 20m SSB, I decided to stay, so I raised a spot and started to work the pile-up.
I managed 53 QSOs in 24 minutes, including many calls from Spain and Portugal with very strong signals which made me feel like I was on 40m. However, other more distant stations from England, Germany, Austria, Switzerland were also logged.
When the pile up dried out, I QSYed and found MM0YCJ/P working on a near frequency and I managed to make S2S QSO with him. Thank you!
The I QSYed to 12m CW, where I logged 13 QSOs in 9 minutes.
Finally I managed to make S2S QSO with HB9BIN/P on 30m CW but couldn’t make it with neither Ángel EA/M0HDF/P, nor Alberto EA2DCA/P.
All in all, I have collected 94 QSOs today in this activation.
After having packed up and when I was ready to start descent, I took this picture of the Summit showing the spot where I had been operating. As you can see, there was just very Little snow, almost nothing I could work comfortably sitting on a rock.
Descent was again a nice, pleasant walk through the beautiful beech trees forest.
When I got to the car and started driving back home on the dirt road, I took this nice picture of the Little village Goldaratz in this beautiful landscape.
Thanks again for your calls and QSOs.
Happy New Year and best 73 de Guru - EA2IF