After a weekend with persistent “tsirimiri” which is how we call the light rain in basque language, not being able to activate SOTA, this Monday looked more promising, with grey clouds in the morning sky but some sunshine from time to time and no rain finally.
Some time before Noon, I had finished my duties and headed to the North-West to activate a new unique for me.
This map shows it’s location at about 35Km NW of my QTH:
After parking at the village of Ihaben, I followed this GPS track with an elevation gain of about 250m.
After 2 days of light rain, the track was a bit muddy in some sections,
But not too bad on most of the track:
At this point, the gradient became steeper:
This stone walled building is right where we must take a right instead of following straight ahead:
After this point, the track crosses a beautiful beech trees forest:
From this point onwards there’s a steep final section in which I didn’t take pictures:
And the summit was finally reached.
The summit was in the forest so I wasn’t getting much sunshine. I even felt a bit cold some times:
My setup was a 14m long wire as a sloper from the top of my 7m long telescopic fishing rod:
To a 9:1 unun with a counterpoise wire of about 6m.
My rig FT-817ND at 5W and a MFJ-941B antenna tuner.
The activation started at the alerted start time (12h30z) on 30m and it went like this:
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30m CW: 31 QSOs, 3 of which were S2S, after about 45 minutes QRV.
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40m SSB: 36 QSOs after about 35 minutes QRV.
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20m CW: 14 QSOs after about 20 minutes QRV.
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10m CW: 0 QSOs after a few minutes CQing.
A total of 81 QSOs in the log, 3 of which were S2S.
You can see it on this map:
On 30m CW, I copied very well @SP9AMH calling me but he didn’t seem to copy me when I got back to him with a signal report.
On 20m CW, I copied @K3TCU calling me but he was very weak and he didn’t seem to copy me when I got back to him with a signal report.
QSB was quite severe.
After QRT and pack up, descent was uneventful.
This was the only moment where I had some limited views:
Once at the car, I took this picture of Mt. Pagadiaundi EA2/NV-138.
And this other picture for you to see the surroundings of this little village:
On my way home, I stopped my car to take these 3 pictures which I’ve put together to make this panoramic view:
It’s been a pleasure revisiting this beautiful area where my parents used to take me and my siblings on Sundays when we were little kids and I hadn’t seen for quite a long time.
Thanks dear chasers for your calls and QSOs. I’ll be looking forward to copying you all again soon from a summit.
73,
Guru