I am fortunate to have a good friend living in Gran Canaria, so visit regularly but all before I got addicted to SOTA. So this is my first trip post ‘discovering SOTA’ and i must say Gran Canaria looks epic; lots of SOTA summits available with some decent hikes.
Pico de la Cogolla EA8/GC-020 accessed from the north by a gravel road
To start the holiday I decided to climb Pico de la Cogolla EA8/GC-020. It looked short and manageable but the route I planned required getting the rental car up an approach track, something that I understand can be problematic in GC. That however turned into the easy bit.
As I approached via Car along the gravel track, the full mountain came into view and I became concerned. Lots of crags with some very pointed vertical bits and i did began wondering if an approach from the North was the right one. It did look like I would need to pick out a route with care.
The route I used did require allot of care: scrambling, loose rocks, route-finding around the crags and exposure. But it was well worth it for the views and the experience !
I would not recommend this route unless you are very confident with scrambling and route finding - if anyone wants details in future just message me @G5OLD.
Once on the summit I immediately put up the 10m vertical.
I had tried the bands earlier in the day and decided that 10m was it for this afternoon especially as Europe was in range, beyond my skip distance. It was and I got a rather good pile up and allot of interest in this summit
I was surprised too! I had quite a number of people comment that ‘10m was bad’ and I should try a lower band like 20m…
I thought conditions were ok and with a monoband up, I didn’t bother to try anything else, although at times I could hear stations fade in and then completely out!
BTW: 10w, 1/4w vertical with 3 radials and a Xeigu 6100
Hi Tim, congrats on your activation… looks awesome. Great to hear you and surprising as well. Only a handful of 10m contacts, mainly with Spain.
10W into J-Pole.
Tim EA8/G5OLD/P was a great signal into North East England today on 10m around 1610z from EA8/GC-016 - another unique, first time activation, congratulations to Tim. Despite the band not being the 10 metres we knew a few weeks ago, he was 59 with me.
5B/SP9WZS/P was easily workable on CW at 14:44z on 28060, although I did have to wait my turn, but Stavros SV2RUJ/P was not. There ws no propagation from Greece into UK or even Germany at that time (I heard DJ2MX say so 20m), when both of us later worked Stavros there.
Thanks Phil. I put the 10m vertical up to just “give 10 a try first”. Result… largest pile up i’ve had: 55 stations from one spot.
Nothing too wrong with 10m today - it faded up and down within seconds but no problem working anywhere in Europe from EA8. Sometimes huge signals into the US and South Africa, i had a 5/8 with ZS5AYC.
It seems ten has been long single-skip only today. I could hear 5B/SP9WZS/P well enough to work him just before 15:00z, but I could hear nothing on SV2RUJ/P’s spotted frequency, and the station on EA8/G5OLD/P’s spotted frequency only occasionally peeked above the floor, so I never heard a callsign.
