I took my notebook with information about the SOTAs near Ferrol and programmed my car GPS to the “ARRANQUE SUBIDA” = HIKE START point, which is where I use to park the car to get to Mt. Fontardión EA1/CR-005.
It’s just a 25 Km drive from Ferrol, where we are living in during our summer holidays.
Here you can see my car parked by the road in this picture taken in a look back just a few tens of meters after starting the hike.
The previous picture was taken just before this gate which needs to be passed through.
As you can see, Lucho, the dog, didn’t need me to cross the gate and he proceeded as whether he already knew where we were going to.
The hike to the Summit took us just 15 minutes of an easy track. Here we already had the Summit at sight:
Once in the Summit, full of commercial telecommunication antennas, I set up attaching my fishing rod to the fence.
Antenna was an endfed wire to a 9:1 un-un plus a 7m long counterpoise wire on the ground.
Rig was Yaesu FT-817ND @ 5watts with MFJ-941B antenna tuner.
The activation started on 40m CW, where I contacted first with some of my EA close friends and right away with Phil G4OBK.
Then I QSYed to 20m CW where I was delighted with the S2S with Geert F/PA7ZEE/P I couldn’t have in my previous activation. Thanks for your call Geert. I was also pleased with a DX with Rich N4EX.
When 20m CW dried up, I QSYed to SSB and I only managed to log 1 single QSO with Mike DJ5AV. Thanks Mike for your call!
With no takers on 20m SSB, I decided to QSY to 30m but, when I was QSYing, I passed by 14.062 and found F6FTB/P activating F/MC-248, so I gave him a call and we completed our S2S QSO. Merci!
Then I looked to SOTAwatch and found there was an activator on 40m SSB, so I QSYed there and managed to QSO with EI/PA3FYG/P activating EI/IS-106 with very good signals. Thanks!
After this QSO on 40m SSB, I QSYed to 10m CW, where I got 1 single QSO with Jan OK2PDT. Thanks!
A new look to SOTAwatch let me find there was another activator on 40m CW. It took me nearly 40 minutes of struggle to make my signals copied by Paul HB9AXL/P, and luckily another S2S got finally to the log after some quite hard work.
Again SOTAwatch provided valuable information and I QSYed to 20m CW to complete another interesting and not easy S2S QSO with TF/DK5WL. Great ears. Thank you!
I finally went to 30m and after some CQing, I only got 1 single QSO with DL1FU. Thanks!
Not having any more takers on 30m, I saw again on SOTAwatch that Paul HB9AXL/P was now on 20m CW, so I QSYed there just to have a new S2S QSO with better signals and easier copy than what we had previously on 40m. Much better on 20m!
When I was finishing my S2S QSO with Paul, OE100SPW asked me to QSY up. I moved 1 Kc up and we had our QSO. There I stayed and kept CQing to made QSO with 3 more chasers.
At this point, I received a message via whatsapp from Jorge EA2LU telling me about LZ2AF/P activating the 10 pointer LZ/RO-001 on 14.060. He had been on 40m CW previously and I had stalked him but his signal was far too weak and I had
to give him up. But his signal on 20m was better and we completed our S2S QSO. Thank you!
CQing on 15m CW produced no QSOs.
After having worked on 10, 15, 20, 30 and 40m, on CW (all bands) and SSB (20 and 40m) a total of 30 QSOs were logged, 7 of which were S2S.
I had a lot of fun and enjoyed this activation very much.
This is the log:
This is the S2S log:
Let me share with you the panoramic views I enjoyed from my operating position:
Thanks dear chasers for your calls and QSOs.
Best 73,
Guru
