Last night I felt like activating today one of the tough 4 pointers near my QTH, but it started to rain and it rained so much and strong at about midnight that I thought there wouldn’t be a chance to go to the mountains today, so I went to bed late and I didn’t set the alarm to wake up at any specific time.
When I woke up this morning, there was a beautiful sunny morning with just some few white clouds. After breakfast I spoke to my wife and she agreed for me to do a quick SOTA activation before a typical Sunday late lunch.
I decided I’d do a 1 pointer located at about 10Km from my QTH, as I had not yet activated it this year.
I can see it like this between the top of these trees from the window of my house:
I drove to the village of Añorbe, parked the car and did the easy and short hike in about 10 minutes in company of my dog Lucho, as usual.
There is an ermitage at the top, as well as tables and benches for picnic:
The wind was coming from the South-West, so I decided to set up at this side of the ermitage, with a clear view and great take-off towards the North and the East:
I put my 7m telescopic fishing rode:
And the endfed antenna wire as a sloper with the end at the top of the fishing rode and the feed point down at the ground level. I also connected some 2 or 3 meters of wire as a counterpoise.
This picture taken from my operating position shows Mt. Erreniega EA2/NV-092.
Here a nice view of the valley:
The activation was on 3 bands, 20, 30 and 40m. Only CW as I knew the SSB sections would be extremely busy with contest.
This is the full log:
I also tried to work on 17m but I was unable to lower SWR with my MFJ ATU despite having tried many different Capacitance and Inductance combinations.
I don’t know exactly why but no matter the antenna I use (endfed, random long wire with several different lengths or 7m long wire GP) I always find it impossible to lower SWR on 17m with this antenna tuner. May be I’ll have to build a specific monoband antenna for this tricky band.
Thanks to all the chasers for your calls and QSOs and I’ll be looking forward to hearing you again soon.
Best 73 de Guru