Mt. Girizu EA2/NV-042 by EA2IF/P on 30/03/2021

When I was nearly finishing my descent of Mt. Ortzantzurieta after my earlier SOTA activation, I found this small bunker and took this picture, where you can see Mt. Girizu, the next SOTA of the day. This area is very, very close to the EA-F border and these small strategic bunkers were important surveyance points in older and fortunately past times.
Once there, and seeing that 4 pointer that close not having yet finished the winter bonus period, I couldn’t resist trying an activation.


As soon as I got down to the main road, I recovered cellular phone signal again and I raised an Alert for this SOTA.
There’s a steep dirt road up to the top and I managed to get my AWD Rodius up there, not without a slight moment of semi-panic, when I had to cross one of the several water evacuation channels forming interesting bumps across the road and I felt the front and the rear wheels briefly loosing traction while the belly of the car seemed to be slightly rubbing the dirt/ground mixture. It was just for a second or less and after gently stepping a bit on the gas, the bump was overcome and everything continued smoothly to the top.
My setup was a sloper 14m long endfed wire hung from the top of a 7m long fishing rod to a 9:1 unun with a 6m long counterpoise wire extended on the grass.
My rig was FT-817ND at 5W with a MFJ-941B antenna tuner.
Battery was LiFePo4 4S2P.
Here you can see my fishing rod tied to the fence of this commercial comms tower.

This is how I tied the fishing rod to the fence:

This is the feed point seen from my operating position with the nice views of that valley.

The air wasn’t clear with lots of sand brought by the South winds from the Sahara dessert. We call this phenomenon calima.

The operation went as follows:

  • 20m CW: 13 QSOs, 1 of which was DX USA, after about 20 minutes QRV and CQing.

  • 30m CW: 26 QSOs after about 30 minutes QRV and CQing.

  • 40m CW: 25 QSOs after about 30 minutes QRV and CQing.

  • 60m CW: 6 QSOs after about 15 minutes QRV and CQing.

  • 20m CW: 7 QSOs, 1 of which was DX Canada, after about 15 minutes QRV and CQing.

You can see here the full log with 77 QSOs after 1h45 on the air.




You can see it on the map:

Thanks dear chasers for your calls and QSOs.

I’ll be looking forward to copying you all again soon from a SOTA.

73,

Guru

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Hey Guru

It’s good to see that you’re doing well again.

I look forward to our next s2s

73 Armin

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