Mt. Bordaburu EA2/NV-182 by EA2IF/P on 20/06/2020

A couple of days ago, I set my new SOTA target, which is activating all the summits within a 30Km radius from my QTH in Pamplona (Locator IN92et). I have already activated many of them, but I found, with the help of the great SMP, there were still 16 summits that I had never activated. These are:
>Hace un par de días, fijé mi nuevo objetivo SOTA, que es activar todas las cimas en un radio de 30Km desde mi QTH en Pamplona (Locator IN92et). Ya he activado muchas de ellas, pero encontré, con la ayuda del fantástico SMP, que todavía había 16 cimas que nunca había activado. Estas son:


So I planned an activation of the closest one for today, Mt. Bordaburu.
This is it’s location to the North of Pamplona at 18Km from my QTH:
>Así que planee una activación de la más cercana para hoy, Mt. Bordaburu.
Esta es su ubicación hacia el Norte de Pamplona a 18Km de mi QTH:


And this is the GPS track we followed:
>Y este es el track GPS que seguimos:
imagen
The ascent was through dense forest and quite steep at times:
>El ascenso fue a través de denso bosque y bastante empinado a veces:




After about 45 minutes, we reached the summit , although I found no trig point, cairn or anything marking the summit. After a steep ascent, the summit was quite a wide flat area , so the AZ was quite a big area. But it all was full of trees, so there were not too many places to setup.
>Después de unos 45 minutos, alcanzamos la cima, aunque no encontré vértice, hito de piedras o algo que marcase la cima. Después de un ascenso empinado, la cima era una amplia zona bastante llana, así que la zona de activación era un área bastante grande. Pero estaba toda llena de árboles, así que no había demasiado sitios para instalar.

I tied my fishing rod to a young tree trunk like this as a way to try to get the top end as high as possible:
>Até mi caña de pescar al tronco de un joven árbol de esta manera para intentar tener el extremo superior lo más alto posible:



You can see here the final setup and the operating place with no views:
>Pueden ver aquí el montaje final y el lugar de operación sin vistas:

Rig was FT-817ND at 5W + MFJ-941B antenna tuner.
Antenna was 10m long endfed wire as a sloper to a 9:1 unun and 6m long elevated counterpoise wire.
El equipo fue FT-817ND a 5W + acoplador de antena MFJ-941B.
La antena fue un cable de 10m de largo alimentado en el extremo con unun 9:1 y un cable contraantena elevado de 6m de largo.

The activation went like this:

  • 30m CW: 34 QSOs in 37 minutes, 4 of which were S2S.

  • 40m SSB: 82 QSOs in 40 minutes. I had problems to write that fast on the log.

  • 20m SSB: 20 QSOs in 22 minutes, 2 of which were S2S.

  • 10m CW: 1 QSO. Thanks Jan @OK2PDT.

  • 40m CW: 1 S2S chased.

  • 30m CW: 1 S2S chased.

  • 20m CW: 11 QSOs in 15 minutes, time in which I also chased 1 S2S.

>La activación fue así:

  • 30m CW: 34 QSOs en 37 minutos, 4 de los cuales fueron SaS.

  • 40m SSB: 82 QSOs en 40 minutos. Tuve problemas para escribir así de rápido en el log.

  • 20m SSB: 20 QSOs en 22 minutos, 2 de los cuales fueron SaS.

  • 10m CW: 1 QSO. Gracias Jan @OK2PDT.

  • 40m CW: 1 S2S cazado.

  • 30m CW: 1 S2S cazado.

  • 20m CW: 11 QSOs en 15 minutos, tiempo en el que también cacé 1 SaS.

Here you can see the full log with 150 QSOs and 9 S2S after 2h 37 minutes on the air:
>Aquí pueden ver el log completo con 150 QSOs y 9 SaS después de 2h 37 minutos en el aire:








You can see it on the map:
>Pueden verlo en el mapa:

After QRT and pack up, I took this selfie before leaving:
>Después de QRT y empacar, tomé este selfie antes de marcharme:

This is the only view I had right before starting descent from the AZ:
>Esta es la única vista que tuve justo antes de empezar a descender desde la zona de activación:

Thanks dear chasers for your calls and QSOs.
I’ll be looking forward to copying you all again soon from a summit.
>Gracias estimados cazadores por sus llamadas y QSOs.
Estaré esperando volver a copiarles a todos ustedes pronto desde una cima.

73,

Guru

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Hi Guru
WOW 150 QSO.s Great Job

2 questions, I have a FT-817nd and the internal battery
would never last that long. What do you use for battery?

Do use a paper Log on the summit?
That’s a lot of work when you get home to do a Log.
73 Gary

Kaixo Guru
Thanks a lot for the qso. I was tested my new Inverted V.
Best 73 and see you soon.
Agur
André f5ukl

Hi Gary,
Yes, 150 QSOs was my record. I think I had never made so many in a SOTA activation.
I bought my FT-817ND in 2009 second hand and the internal battery was already ruined, so I took it off and I always power the rig with an external battery. My current battery is a 4S2P LiFePo4 4200 mAh I got from HobbyKing back in 2016 IIRC. I have even been activating for over 3 hours and the battery still was supplying power like in the first minute. The voltage meter in my FT-817ND usually measures 13.1-13.2 V at the beginning of the activation. After more than 2 hours and a half activating on CW and SSB yesterday, the voltage seen by my FT-817ND was 12.8. In the few activations I’ve been runing more than 3 hours, I never saw the voltage dropping below 12.7V.

Regarding logging, yes I use paper and pencil. I admit I had difficulties to follow the speed of the QSOs on 40m SSB due to hand writing with my right hand on a small notebook on my right thigh and holding the hand microphone with my left hand. The notebook wanted to move so I had to hold it with my left hand, but I had to speak to the microphone so I was lowering my head in order to get closer to the microphone when my left hand with the microphone in it was down holding the notebook on my thigh. But all of that was necessary to achieve the several minutes I had with 3 QSOs and even 1 or 2 occasions with 4 QSOs in the same minute. I know I could easily solve this with a headset of headphones+microphone and/or having a notebook stuck to a bigger board, but I just want to keep it this way for the moment because I mostly operate CW and this doesn’t give me any troubles because there’s nothing to hold with my hand near to my mouth. On CW, everything is on my thigh, paddle and notebook, so there are no problems to handwrite and hold things still in place.
Typing the paper log to the computer log is not that much, just a while and I enjoy doing it because I usually remember the moments of each QSO with the chasers and in particular the S2S. You know, it’s like extending even further the fun time. I like doing that as much as I like writing the activation report, because it let’s me remember the whole expedition and it’s again an extension of the fun. Even more because I receive so much positive feedback from you all about those reports.
I get so much fun out of the whole SOTA experience that I even doubt sometimes this is even legal :wink:

73,

Guru

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Hi André,
I was really surprised when you called me in the pileup. First because your signal was huge S9+++ and second because you were not signing /P and that meant you were chasing me from home for the first time. You can be proud and happy because your new antenna seems to work just great!
I hope there will be many more chases to come.
73,

Guru

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Hi Guru,
Glad you had a fantastic day. My activation time was somewhat time limited. I run 50Watts and 10Ah of Lipos gives me 2.5 Hrs ops time. Also Sighty Crag G/SB-005 is a hard activation. I will explain.

The drive distance is about 70km each way.
Then we have 10km on a mountain bike uphill on forest roads. (My activation on Wednesday was abandoned due to logging operations. I do not like sharing forest tracks with 30 ton wagons.)
Now comes the fun bit, 1km across cleared forest where every step is very very unsteady.
This is followed by 1km steep up hill, across the worst land in Christendom. Every footstep may be 3 cm down or 1m.
We are now on Sighty Crags, but this is not in the activation zone.
1km to go, but we have to traverse 8 deep cuts in the peat each about 4m deep. We now arrive at Sighty Crag, Phew. Take some photos for confirmation.
Activate (58 QSO’s on 5 bands) and retrace steps.

House to house time 11 1/2 hrs and 2 cw pts gained. But I enjoyed every minute,


Thanks Guru for another S2S
G0EVV/P

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Hello Guru,

thanks for the QSO yesterday.

73 de Marcel DM3FAM

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