After the last successfull lowly demanding hikes, I wanted to to go a step forward and try a slightly more demanding hike, so I chose this summit for today with a very nice warm temperature and some clouds in the sky with no rain forecasted.
The ascent involved 345m of elevation gain according to my CASIO watch altimeter and took me 49 minutes.
As soon as I got to the summit and the following selfie was taken,
together with some pics of the summit and the views:
I setup with my brand new 10m long telescopic pole, which I got from Armin @DL6GCA during his recent visit to Pamplona. The antenna used was my usual 14m long endfed wire as a sloper to my 9:1 unun from which a 5m long counterpoise wire was extended on the grass following the same direction of the sloper wire.
I forgot taking a picture of my setup, but it was very windy and the new 10m long telescopic pole had an interesting bending test today.
The activation went like this:
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2m FM: 2 S2S QSOs with Alain EA2/F5ODQ/P and Ignacio EA2BD/P before setting up my HF antenna. Both were together activating Mt. Erreniega EA2/NV-092. We had been all together the evening before enjoying beer and tapas in Pamplona and this S2S was more or less scheduled although I thought they were going to be in a different summit.
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30m CW: 18 QSOs, 6 of which S2S, in 17 minutes.
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40m SSB: 50 QSOs in 27 minutes. It was a really fast operation!
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20m CW: 16 QSOs, 1 of which S2S, in 28 minutes.
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20m SSB: 1 S2S
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15m CW: CQ but no responses.
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30m CW: 1 S2S
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40m CW: 1 S2S
All in all 89 QSOs, 12 of which S2S after about 2.5 hours QRV.
You can see it on the map:
During the activation a group of a man, 2 women and about 6 or 7 little girls arrived to the summit. Some of them approached to ask me what I was doing as well as to offer me something to eat, but I told them no thanks to the food offer and promissed that I would explain them in a few minutes what I was doing, but not at that very moment.
They patiently waited and when I finished my 20m CW run, I went where they were, about 20m away of me, to explain them about my ham radio hobby and the SOTA programme in particular. They seemed to be very interested and the even came to see my rigs and listen the morse code made by the FT-817ND and the Palm paddle. The little girls said they could hear the wind but it actually was the 20m band noise.
After packing up, I ate my ham and cheese sandwich, took a few pictures of the views from the summit and descended.
Let me share with you some of the pictures I took before descent:
Mt. Ezcaba EA2/NV-119 on the left and the city of Pamplona at its foot.
Views to the North:
Thanks dear chasers for your calls and QSOs.
I’ll be looking forward to copying you all again soon from a SOTA.
73,
Guru