After my disappointing experience with the very bad propagation during last evening activation and after having read M0LEP post this morning speaking about bad propagation today too, I wasn’t very confident to go out and activate something today, but I finally told to myself that the day was going to be a nice sunny one and it would be good to spend some time in the mountains no matter the propagation.
Good that I made such decision because I had a great time in a new mountain I had never hiked before and also a great activation with up to 60 QSOs on 20m CW and SSB, 3 of which were S2S.
The target of the day looked like this when I approached it through the A12 highway:
This mountain is close to the highway A12, so it has an easy access.
I parked my car by the monastry of Iratxe. This picture was taken when I got back after the activation:
I followed a GPS track I got from the web the night before and after a nice and sometimes demanding hike, I got to this Summit with this steel cross on it:
It’s a bad quality picture taken with my Smartphone.
As soon as I looked around, I realised that there was a higher summit with a trig point so I descended and headed towards the other higher summit:
It took me a while and not little effort to get there, as I initially took a wrong path, which I had to abandon and get back after some unsuccessful struggle which took me to the edge of a rocky wall impossible to descend for me without rock climbing equipment and skills.
Finally I got there and when I placed the antennas on the trig point base and I was taking a picture, I heard a man talking to his daughter and telling her: - now we are going to the real summit, which is that one with the sword on it.
Just after having conquered 2 summits of this mountain, I was made aware that none of them were the real summit. The real Summit was right on top of those rocks you can see in the picture I took from the trig point of this secondary summit.
Once again I descended and headed to the third Summit, the real one.
By the time I got there, I was far behind Schedule so I quickly installed the mobile GP antenna attached to the existing Excalibur-like sword but I put just one wire radial in order to avoid delaying even further the start of the activation.
As soon as I switched ON my rig and tuned on 20m CW, I found ON/PA7ZEE/P from SOTA ON/ON-024 calling CQ.
There was QSB and his signal sometimes vanished, but it finally got back in good shape and we managed to complete a S2S QSO.
This was the first QSO of my activation. Then I QSYed down and started CQing. My smartphone had got kind of frozen for a while and I was unable to raise a selfspot, but, fortunatelly, Manuel EA2DT found me and I asked him to spot me. So he did (thanks Manuel) and several stations were logged at a pretty good pace. 31 QSOs in 34 minutes, 2 of which were S2S, the second one was with Marcial EA2BDS/P at EA1/BU-051.
Then I QSYed to 20m SSB. My Smartphone seemed to have recovered by then and I was able to raise a selfspot. This SSB run produced 29 QSOs in 27 minutes, one of which was a S2S with Iñaki EB2GKK/P at EA2/VI-025.
This was the very last QSO of this activation and I was very pleased with it because I was announcing my QRT and was about to switch the rig off, when Iñaki called me. It was just in time!
This was my operating position, while sitting on the top rock:
Let me now share with you some of the panoramic views I enjoyed from Mt. Montejurra today:
I dont’ want to finish off without highlighting the extreme good behaviour of the chasers in the pile-ups.
It was a very pleasant day. Thanks very much to all the chasers and the spotters.
Best 73 de Guru.