My wife was invited to make a presentation during a congress to be held in the very beautiful city of Cuenca last Friday, so I took Thursday afternoon and Friday off and the whole family travelled by car to Cuenca on Thursday afternoon.
I had never been to Cuenca before and I wasn’t very sure about the best way to get there, so I fully relied on my car GPS, which calculated a route of about 460 Km and took us through the beautiful Sierra de Albarracin and the Universal mountains. What we saw was absolutely amazing, gorgeous and highly recommendable.
While my wife was attending the congress on Friday morning, I took our three kids to see the beautiful city of Cuenca around the hotel. I also took them to the Science museum and the planetarium, which was very much enjoyed by all of us.
At lunch time we sat in a terrace at Plaza Mayor, close to the gorgeous gothic cathedral and my wife joined us there for a good paella and some other stuff.
We spent the rest of the day visiting the town and having a very pleasant time.
We had dinner in other terrace while watching the football game of Spain vs Netherlands. No comments on this… :-(((((
The plan for today was visiting the “Ciudad Encantada”, which is an amazing tour along a collection of natural very impressive karstic formations of spectacular shapes.
Before leaving the hotel this morning, I had a quick look to the SOTA summits listed in EA4/CU and I found that the top one, EA4/CU-001, was not far from “Ciudad Encantada”, so I told my wife and the kids that I’d rather go for a quick SOTA while they were having lunch after our visit to “Ciudad Encantada”.
They agreed but my wife warned me not to let them there waiting for too long.
I left my family in a nice restaurant at the village of Tragacete, where they told me the lunch they had was superb, and I quickly, urgently went for my targetted summit Mogorrita EA4/CU-001.
I told my car GPS to drive me to the coordinates shown in the database and after about 16Km from the village of Tragacete, I found myself in the middle of a mountain dirt road surrounded by pines with 2 mountains at each of my sides. As soon as I started hiking to the one on my right, I realised that the one on the left was higher, so I understood that was the one I wanted to climb to. After a difficult hike of about 35 minutes on very steep slopes, with many loosen stones and some fallen pine trees, I reached the summit.
I quicly prepared my set-up: 7m telescopic fishing rod with a random wire inside it, 4 counterpoise wires, MFJ ATU and Yaesu FT-817.
I told my friends through whatsapp that I was going to start CQing on 10.114 and so I did, but after a few CQ calls, none of my friends showed up, so I decided to selfspot on SOTAWATCH. In the pause time necessary to write such spot, another station came and asked QRL? very close to my frequency. I answered YES but he didn’t hear me or he didn’t want to QSY just for a tiny QRP signal like mine, so he started CQing.
I had already seen my spot published on SOTAWATCH, so I decided not to QSY and keep calling CQ SOTA on 10.114. It was going to be a very quick one because I was a bit stressed and worried, not wishing to have my family waiting too long for me.
The first station to answer to my CQ call was G4SSH at 13:45 utc. He gave me a very weak signal report of 339.
I feared that the QRM from the station close to me was going to make this activation very difficult when a PA0 called me in second place but he didn’t come back to me after my PA0? 599 BK.
At 13:46 HB9CEX came to me and ON4FI immediately after.
At 13:48 OE8SPW
OK2PDT at 13:49
The missing PA0 came back at 13:50. He was PA0SKP.
IK1GPG at 13:51
F5SQA at 13:52
After one or two CQ calls without response, I said that I had to QRT and right after this, DJ5AV called me at 13:54. Just in time!
After this last QSO, I made one more CQ call but nobody else came back, so I said QRT, 73 to all es TU, switched off, packed up and descended with maximum care to avoid falling down on the very steep slope.
I picked up my wife and the kids 2 hours after having left them. They were very well after a delicious meal and I was very hungry instead. But I had my SOTA apetite satisfied, so I just got a ham and cheese sandwich and a piece of sponge cake. That was enough for me today.
The activation was one single band and far too short, only 10 minutes on the air, but I was very happy with this new unique activated, the highest summit in the Spanish province of Cuenca.
I want to thank my chasers but mainly my wife and kids for letting me do this today.
Best 73 de Guru - EA2IF