Motivation
I wanted to visit a new summit for me. Mt. Seanbe had only been activated 6 times to date, being 4 of them in VHF only. Last activation was back in february 2016, therefore I decided it was a good summit to put on air.
Activation date: October 2nd, 2021.
Climb
You can access to the summit in the village of Beruete. This is an easy one,that starts with a dirt road and some concrete paths here and there up to mid way and then you enter into the forest just to the very summit.
- Track length: 2,5 km
- Height gain: about 285 meters.
- Max elevation: 1018 m.
Soon after the start of the climb the height over the valley provides a nice view of Beruete:
At mid point of the route (845 m elevation) you leave the dirt road and enters in the forest:
The path soon gets surrounded with big bleech trees:
About 25 minutes after entering the forest I approached the summit, that is also covered with trees.
Only the very summit has some unobstructed views, where the density of trees decreases a bit. The mountain mailbox on top is a big metal mushroom:
Activation
I had seen pictures of the summit in advance of the visit, so that I knew there was little space to install a long antenna wire. I decided to carry my short multiband EFHW that is 13 m long and covers 20,30 and 40 m HF bands (40m is coil loaded).
It took me a while to extend the wire inverted vee passing by some branches. Maybe this is the kind of summit where a vertical antenna is more appropriate. Anyway, I ran the activation with my EFHW with good results.
I used my Kenwood TH-F7 VHF handheld , and an Elecraft KX3 powered with 3 LiIon 21700 cells.
I started on VHF FM briefly and then switched to HF, running on 20m SSB & CW, then, 30 and 40m CW. I tried to find a clear QRG on 40m SSB but the band was crowded and my compact 40m aerial was not the best one to create a space for me.
I spent some time chasing S2S, which is a nice activity but very time consuming. It is a bit difficult to break the pile up when you are running low power.
Thanks to these great operators who payed attention and gave way for me to log in, many times dealing with simultaneous QRM during our qso. Anytime I got a S2S I felt very happy, saying hi to another activator and wishing a good day up there!
After 3 hour 20 minutes on air I closed my log with 71 qso, being 22 of them S2S.
Happy for having a succesful new one activation I packed and left the summit.
Autumn tip of the day
While going back I enjoyed the nice views of the forest. Autumn has just started and the changing colors of the trees are signals of the season change:
I encountered in my way other signals, in form of fruits that are growing in this period of time.
See some mushrooms, blackberries and chesnut I found. In some weeks they will be ready to eat.
73 de Ignacio
