There were pretty big chances for rain today. However I decided to try a not too distant and easy Summit. Mt. Miravalles is just 30Km NorthEast of my QTH and the ascent takes only about 15m.
It didn’t rain when I left home, but as soon as I passed driving through the tunnel of Sierra del Perdón (SOTA Erreniega EA2/NV-092) I found the rain and so it was until I got to the parking spot.
I started the hike at the village of Huarte right after having passed by the following remains of an old church:
Following a few pictures of the short and quite muddy ascent
After 15 minutes we got to the Summit with this big cross and the mountaneers mailbox on it.
I walked a little further and quickly found the remains of this partly buried castle remains,
And that’s exactly where I decided to set up my station.
I started my activation on 20m SSB at exactly the alert announced time with a selfspot on Sotawatch.
After only 6 QSOs with pretty low signal reports, nobody else came back to my CQ SOTA calls. Weird!
So I moved to 30m CW. I had difficulties and was unable to tune for good SWR on this band, which was something totally unexpected and made think that something was not right. In addition, the signals I was receiving on the band were very weak. This confirmed to me that something was going wrong. I checked PL connectors, ATU antenna switch, rig settings, etc, but nothing changed. Then I unplugged the headphones, raised volume up to hear the band and went to the antenna pole to check the cable connection. Here I found that I had an open circuit problem: the driven wire was not having electrical contact with the central wire of my RG-58. After some manipulation, I managed to fix the problem and the receptor came to life with many loud signals instantly heard.
This means that very probably I worked the 6 QSOs on 20m SSB without antenna, just with the coax line and the 4 x 5m long counterpoise wires!!!
Once the problem got fixed, I had a good run on 30m CW with 33 QSOs logged in 26 minutes.
After 30m CW and after my faulty initial outing on 20m SSB, I decided to give this band/mode a second try.
This second trial produced 14 QSOs in 17 minutes, after which I QSYed to 12m CW.
Just 9 minutes on 12m band let me log 10 more QSOs.
By that time some few drops of rain had started to fall on me and my rigs, which made me think that it was just the time to finish off.
Before QRT, I switched to 2m FM and called CQ SOTA. My good old friend Javier - EA2BRI came back to me with his HT while he was walking on the streets of Pamplona to buy some fresh bread. This guy is the man whom I owe to having started working CW with my CB transceiver converted or adapted to work on 10m, as he installed a simple but effective CW tone oscillator in it, which allowed me to start making CW QSOs back in 1985.
Once we finished our 2m FM QSO, nobody else replied to my following CQ SOTA calls.
Some more drops of rain were falling but, before QRT, I looked to the spots on sotawatch and tried to chase a couple of activators without success because I wasn’t copying them on the spotted frequencies. Finally I copied and worked DL/PB2T/P at DM/HE-397. Thank you very much for the only S2S of today.
Later I tried another S2S with a German activator but the pile-up was big, his signal was pretty weak and I was QRP 5w, so after some unsuccessful trials, since the rain was starting to increase, I decided to go QRT.
This is a picture I took of my gears from my operating spot:
And these are the views I had from this very same point.
After packing up and a short but slippery muddy descent we were at the village of Huarte and I enjoyed the following nice waterfall:
I also found in this village of Huarte a very typical thing of these Christmas days in Spain, We call them “Belen” and they are scaled reproductions of the author imagined Jesuschrist birth place at his birth time in Belem, with all the villagers, the shepherds and the 3 Magic Kings coming to see and give presents to the just born baby Jesuschrist.
I want to take advantage of such picture to wish you all a very Merry Christmas.
Have a great X-mas time in company of all your family and closer friends.
Best 73 de Guru - EA2IF
