Mt. Bizkai EA2/NV-142 by EA2IF/P on 20/09/2015

For some unknown reason (at least to me) my wife felt in the mood to go out today and spend the day in nature, in the mountain. I touched her forehead and she wasn’t ill :wink: She even let me choose for our destination a summit which is a 2 points SOTA not far from our QTH and very near to Pamplona.
The reason for this unexpected behaviour was that my wife has organised this outing with some other friends.
We got together a party of 14 people (6 adults and 8 kids with ages ranging from 1 to 12 years old) at the small village of Ochovi/Otxobi, where we got nicely surprised by the Gothic atrium of the church. I didn’t have any idea about the existance of this small village and its nice Gothic church.

The weather was absolutely fantastic with very nice sunshine and warm temperature.
We hiked slowly with so many children and the group even had the mood to stop hiking and starting to have their lunch a couple of times.
In this picture we were at only 15 minutes of the summit and the group almost decided to start lunch here. Luckily I manged to encourage 2 or 3 of the kids to continue the hike with me to the summit and these 2 or 3 encouraged the rest to stand up and keep hiking.

We soon reached the summit and as soon as I was about to start calling on 2m FM with my handheld for a S2S QSO with my friends Iratxe - EA2DNO, Alberto - EA2DCA and Ignacio - EA2BD, who were on Mt. Zuriain (EA2/NV-023) at that time, I heard Iratxe just starting her very first CQ SOTA call, so I replied immediately. We both made with each other our very first QSO of today’s respective activations and it was S2S. Nice! :smile:
After Iratxe, Alberto took up the microphone and then it was Ignacio. It was very nice to have a 3xS2S QSO with good friends to start my activation.
After these S2S, Manuel - EA2DT and Santi - EA2BSB found the way to my log on 2m FM.
With 5 QSOs on the log, I decided to QRT and joint the group for a nice and well deserved lunch.
After lunch, since the group seemed to be in good mood to remain there for a while, I started to prepare the antenna for HF.
Today I brought the 7m fishing pole again after having activated just with my monoband mobile whips over the last months. I installed the 7m vertical on the very summit with 4 wire radials layed on the ground. In the following picture I’m just starting to prepare for the antenna installation while 2 of the kids were observing my movements with attention:

As soon as I switched on my FT-817, I found Ignacio -EA2BD CQing on 20m CW and I gave him a call with 500mW only, as he was booming and our summits were just 25Km appart. My report was 599 even with such little power :smile:
After this QSO I selfspotted and moved to 30m for a good run of 16 QSOs in 15 minutes.
Then, the pile-up dried up and I QSYed to 20m SSB, for a run of 8 QSOs in 11 minutes, one of which was a S2S with Jan - OK2PDT/P at OK/US-034. Thank you, Jan!
There were no more chasers and I decided to QRT and get back with the group, not before taking some few minutes for capturing the following pictures:


The city of Pamplona far in the distance surrounded by several SOTA summits.

Gaztelu (SOTA) and Txurregi (non SOTA) peaks.


Mt. Mortxe (SOTA)

Mt. Erga (SOTA)


Following you’ll see the log of this activation:

We had a nice time in the mountain and I enjoyed again a new SOTA activation.
Thank you for your calls and I’ll be looking forward to hearing you soon again from some other summit.
Have a nice week and best 73 de Guru

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