Hello Sota friends,
Yesterday I did an afternoon activation of EA2/NV-073. I had a lot of fun.
WX was good, some clouds on the way up but later it got better, sun and no wind.
I planned to use higher bands to enhance intercontinental qso.
I used a random vertical (7m) plus 4 ground wires and the ZM-2 tuner.
It worked nicely in 28, 24, 21 and 14 MHz.
When I was settling the HF I called in VHF for a while and I could log my dear sota mates EA2IF and EA2BSB. Then I did the first S2S in the afternoon with EA1IEH/P. Well the start of the activation was promising.
First qso in 28 ssb was Rich N4EX, strong as usual. Anyway, I could just log 2 qso there. I moved to 28 cw but nobody replied to my calls.
I planned to qsy to 21 but I saw a spot of NA6MG in W6/ND-229. I tuned there and there he was! I tried calling and no way at first… I got on and then Dan came back to me: EA2? I tried several times when Qsb on our signals added some difficulty.
My friend EA2LU Jorge who was listening at his Qth tried helping me announcing that it was a S2S qso. Dan was coping little by little: EA2DD?? I replied several times BD BD and finally we could log the exchange. That’s my first EU-USA S2S!! Wow, thanks Dan for your patience and Jorge for your wonderful aid.
I called for a while on 24 cw but I couldn´t log but one more station.
Then I went down to 21 ssb and I then got a number of EU chasers.
VE2JCW called me but he were unable to complete with the signal reports for him.
He requested for several times and there I was again 55 55… He said, no way, I can’t copy, and me again 55 55 55. And yeah! He finally copied the exchange.
I moved to 21 cw and worked some more EU and NE4TN with ease.
The battery was running flat so I decided my last band change to end the activation in 14 ssb. Again some more EU when I greet Barry N1EU. I haven’t heard him since long so it was a pleasure to log him once more.
When I was about to end as the sun was going down and I didn’t want to descent in te darkness, I heard EC2AG/P calling me. By the time a stronger station started chatting 3 KHz down making things much more difficult. I decided to move up searching for a clean freq, and I then could log Antonio S2S.
I did some more qso but my rig refused to get on showing a TX-error message blinking on the display, maybe because of the battery? I have never seen such thing on my FT-817 before…
During the dismantle of the antenna I ran again on VHF and I logged my last S2S with EB2FDT/P on EA2/BI-014.
In the end I logged 66 qso, being 4 S2S and making 5 intercontinental qso. Not that bad with a single random wire. Who said life is too short for Qrp?
Thanks to all chasers, it’s been a great afternoon.
Hpe CU agn soon, VY 73
Ignacio EA2BD
P.s I’ll upload my log in short to the database…