Hello,
Yesterday I did a joint activation together with EA2BSB. To make our activation even better my wife joined us.
She’s not doing it often and we convinced her the views would be breathtaking.
The day was much better than it’s been during summer; clear sky, nice temperature…
We drove about 1 hour and 20 minutes to stop near the border of France. Then we walked for about another hour and a half, making some stops every now and then.
The summit was a bit crowded with some other mountaineers and the views were excellent.
I put my fishpole in a safe place near the summit and locked it with some big stones. The absence of wind allowed me to keep it vertical the whole activation.
By the time I end preparing my setup, Santi EA2BSB has already qualified the summit cause he assemble his Vhf yagi in a minute and start calling when I am still getting ready, hi hi.
I connected my MTR and checked for SWR. In short I started calling. As expected for a Saturday I soon faced a big pile up. I’m used to the sound of my FT-817, which hasn’t got any CW filter and I felt the difference of the built-in filter of the MTR. Some colleagues sounded a bit distorted when far from my center frequency but I could work them all without difficulties.
I received some calls with colleages operating also QRP and they all did well.
I received good reports and I am grateful with the good behaviour that chasers had in the crowd.
My last qso in 20m was a nice S2S with Marcial EA2BDS/P. At first I was surprised when I thought somebody was calling me with my own call EA2BD/P but in the next over I realized that it was Marcial calling me!
We completed FB and then after some more calls without a reply I tried to qsy to 40m but I couln’t tune it to proper SWR, and I did qrt.
Afterwards I logged one more S2S in VHF with EB2GKK/P.
All in all, a pleasant day that ended sharing our sandwiches once we reached the nearest village. We were hungry!
Thanks fer ur calls. CU soon, VY 73
Ignacio
