Mt. Txanburu EA2/NV-071 by EA2IF/P on 08/03/2015

Activation Reports
1

I had another pleasant SOTA day today and got the winter bonus 3 points with a beautiful spring weather: sunshine and about +10 degrees C at the Summit.
Mount Txanburu is about 25 Km East of my QTH with a huge windpower park and the associated QRM on certain bands.
Thanks to the windpower park, there is a track full of huge holes up to the very Summit.
I drove this track up to a point where I parked and hiked/walked along the track until a found a sheltered place to operate not far from the flat and wide Summit.
This picture taken during the ascent is looking South and shows far in the distance the 10 pointer Mt. Moncayo (EA2/ZG-001)

Nice forest, isn’t it?

This nice horses were very interested on me and came very close to me when I approached them and stopped to take this picture with the beautiful Pyrenees in the horizon.

I brought with me the fishing pole, as usual, but also carried my home made magnetic loop, which so many satisfactions has given me over the years.
The plug and play rack I built last Christmas holidays worked perfectly yesterday and so it did today. It looks like the temporary solution applied to solve the power connector issue is so far working fine.
Since the mag. loop is easily tunable for perfect SWR 1:1, I connected it to the front BNC socket of my FT-817, instead of going through the antenna tuner and the rear socket I use when I work with the GP antenna.
I quickly tuned the loop on 20m and started CQing with 500mW just to be picked up by the skimmers and get spotted. This happened very quickly and I immediately switched to 5w.
Dear OMs… what a huge pile up!
I always say I’ll record it one day but I always forget doing it. Sorry…
One day I’ll do it and you’ll understand the real meanning of PILE-UP :smile:
I worked many stations at a good pace including a S2S with DL6MST/P in DM/SA-030, until I started having very strong splatter produced (I believe) by the chasers of a very close SOTA activator.
So I QSYed and tried to find a clearer frequency. It took me a while, as the band was very busy, but I finally found it and started working chasers again.
When the pile up dried up I QSYed to 30m and while tuning my mag. loop on 10.118, Marcial EA2BDS started CQing from EA2/BI-008. This let me call him immediately so my first 30m QSO was a S2S with him, :smile:
Then I moved up 1 or 2 Kc and started CQing. Mikel EA2CW called me back very soon and G3RDQ came to me a few minutes after. I gave him 599 report and when he gave me my report I copied it well but with unusual very low signal and very quiet band noise. I immediately looked at the antenna and found the reason for the band noise and signals drop: the wind had pushed the antenna and made it fall down on the snow. In this condition I didn’t transmit back to G3RDQ for report reception confirmation.
This is the way the loop fell down on the snow:

I put it back up again:

But see the problem. The capacitor was full of snow, so I had to wait some few minutes until it melted with the help of my mouth strongly blowing warm air into it :smile:

I also piled some stones on one of the trypod feet to prevent another problem with the wind, as you’ll see in the previous picture with the antenna up.
Once I managed to get the capacitor clear of snow and water, I managed to tune the loop again and continued CQing on 10.120
Not many more stations came back to me on this second go, but OK2BDF/P called me from OK/PA-011 for the 3rd S2S of the day.
The last QSO was again with G3RDQ and we managed to Exchange reports and confirm the reception I couldn’t do the first time. Perfect!
Before leaving the Summit I took this picture showing the city of Pamplona and it’s metropolitan area down in the valley

Also this one with Mt. Elomendi in the foreground with it’s communications antenna on the top and the snowed Pyrenees in the horizon. Perhaps I’ll have to look at the posibilities of using this tall wind measurements tower next time I’ll visit Mt. Txanburu :wink:

All in all 57 QSOs, 3 of which were S2S.
Apologies to the phone chasers but the phone segment was too noisy today with the ARRL contest, so I worked just CW.

On my way home, I managed to chase EA2OX and EB2GKK each of them activating on 2m FM. This was a perfect way to complete today’s outing.

Thank you and have a nice week.

Best 73 de Guru - EA2IF

4 Likes
2

On what bands did you get interference from the wind powered generators, and how did you decide that it came from the generators?

I ask because wind powered generators are being built at various places in the UK, I’ve not yet detected any HF interference from the nearest ones, at Junction 32 of the M1 onto the M18 near Sheffield, but others are planned for close to where I live if they get funding.

3

I haven’t checked all bands but I can say the windpower generators produced QRM to my FT-817 on 12m and also to my FT-23R on 2m, but this was while being really close to them, within 20 to 40 m distance.
It’s easy to determine because the QRM follows the rotating frequency pattern.
Where I live, there is another windpower generators park about 6Km away to the North and I don’t get any QRM from them.
Best 73 de Guru - EA2If

4

Hi Guru,

glad to catch you today, and happy that you enjoyed of your 3rd SOTA during the weekend.
I wasn’t expecting to count on you on Sunday and I’m happy it all worked fine for you. Good your mag loop wasn’t damaged.
Hope the weather will allow to get on activating some more summits soon.

I’m looking forward to have the chance next days. Thanks for sharing the nice pictures!

VY 73
Ignacio.

5

Hello Guru,
Thanks for taking the time to explain why I did not hear back from you after I sent you your report. I did wonder what had happened . I listened on the frequency for a while in case it was just deep QSB.
I was pleased to catch you again just before you went QRT and to get confirmation that I was in your log.
Looking forward to the next time.
73 David G3RDQ

6

Meikle Says Law GM/SS-148 suffers badly from wideband noise on 17/15/12/10/6m from the nearby Fallago Ridge Windfarm. This is the 1st place I’ve had bad electrical noise froma windfarm. No problems the other week on Windy Standard GM/SS-071 where I was right on top of the generators but the generators are much smaller and a lot older there than at SS-148.

7

Dear David,
I was very pleased when you called me back again on 30m because I was sorry for not having been able to give you the proper QSL 73 TU after having perfectly received your report the first time and I was guessing you would have got kind of wondering what might have happened to me.
In spite of having logged you on the first QSO because it was a good one for me, I reckon once we completed the 2nd QSO, I felt grateful and relief. So much I felt so that after it, I felt it was time to call it a day and I went QRT.
Looking forward to work you again soon.
Best 73 de Guru - EA2IF