Alain F5ODQ, came again to Navarra in the morning of Monday, October 25th 2021 to activate a couple of summits not far to the North of Pamplona, the city where I live. I chased him from home on 40m and later on 20m while he was activating his first summit of the day.
Alain told me something during our 40m QSO but the splatter I had on his frequency was so strong that I didn’t understand it very well. Later, when we had our QSO on 20m, everything was clear. Alain told me he would be activating a second summit that day, that it would be Mt. Epaitzburu EA2/NV-181 and he was inviting me to join him if it was possible for me. Fortunately it was and I accepted his invitation, right after having looked on SOTA maps where that summit was and having reviewed the activation report I published here when I activated that same summit las year.
I quickly got prepared and into the car with my SOTA rucksack in. My Tomtom said 24Km from home to the village of Urritzola, where the start of the hike was.
We met at the very small village of Urritzola, we drove our car on a dirt road up to a point I had spotted during my last year activation which was perfect to park our cars and right at the point where the hiking track started.
The weather was sunny and warm at that near Noon time, so the short and not too steep hike&chatting was absolutely pleasant while crossing a nice beech trees forest.
The summit was wide enough for us to setup well appart from each other.
I setup with my 10m telescopic pole and a 14m long wire as a sloper to a 9:1 unun from which a 5m long counterpoise wire was extended on the grass following the same direction of the sloper antenna wire.
My rig was FT-817ND at 5W with a MFJ-941B antenna tunner.
The activation went as follows:
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60m CW: 2 QSOs after about 8 minutes QRV.
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30m CW: 22 QSOs, 4 of which S2S, after about 30 minutes QRV.
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20m CW: 19 QSOs, 1 of which S2S, after about 25 minutes QRV.
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15m CW: 5 QSOs, 3 of which DX with the U.S.A., after about 23 minutes QRV.
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40m SSB: 5 QSOs after about 10 minutes QRV.
When I finished my activation, I had lunch with a sandwich I had brought from home and a delicious piece of apple cake Alain’s XYL had baked and he kindly offered me.
Alain had quite a long drive back home to Bayonne, so we decided to dismantle, pack up and descend through the forest with another nice chat.
My log finally had 53 QSOs, 5 of which S2S and 3 of which DX with the U.S.A. on 15m and I felt happy with these results.
It was a really nice joint activation and I’m looking forward to having new opportunities for more joint activation with Alain F5ODQ on either side of the EA-F border.
With the good company and the nice chatting, I completely forgot about taking any pictures, but you can have an idea of the place we were at and the views we could enjoy by visiting my last year’s activation report:
73,
Guru