Motivation
Today it is my first day in Christmas holidays, a good oportunity to visit a new summit for me: Mt. Akier, 1124 m.
I will do an afternoon activation and I will test a new battery pack I have prepared, composed of 3 Li-Ion cells 21700 size (the ones used in Tesla vehicles and some electric bikes).
Activation date: 23rd December 2020
Climb
The route starts in the village of Madoz, a picturesque place located high over the surrounding valley, at 754 m.
- Track length: 3,65 km (one way)
- Height gain 370 m
- Summit elevation: 1124 m
The path follows a wide dirt road first but as soon as you enter in the forest it follows a tiny and muddy path.
.It’s been rainy last days and you can guess it was all wet. In order to avoid much troubles with that mud I deviated sideways to progress parallel by the forest.
All trees are naked now on wintertime and the ground is well decorated with old leaves. The thick trunks are wrapped with moss:
After walking this long and boring part of the route, a pass over a barbed wire fence led me to a wide area and the summit was finally at sight:
The last part was a huge climb on the very steep hillside. I had to stop every now and then to take a breath.
After some minutes doing some zigzagging I arrived in the very summit:
Activation
There are a lot of tress in the summit but I could still manage to stretch the antenna wire of my EFHW along the crest. Weather was not great, and although I was lucky to not be covered in fog, I could see lots of clouds at the tip of some surrounding mountains.
I installed quickly and finally my aerial was more or less parallel at about 3 meter over ground, passing some branches.
I connected my LNR LD-5 (discontinued rig nowadays) and started checking SWR in 20m CW. Well 1:1, just perfect!
- Notice the three 21700 Li-Ion cells on some 3D printed holder plus an on/off swithc added in series for safe transportation.
I started calling and soon was called by some frequent chasers, although at 14 utc there is many people far from the radio.
I logged 14 stations on 20m CW, being 5 of them NA DX, I was very glad!
I decided to give 40m a go, to aid some of the nearest chasers, and changed band. SWR was also fine with 1,3:1. I was about to start calling when I saw a big drop on my paper log. Soon some more drops started to fall on my head. I looked around and noticed the weather had changed badly. I quickly put my backpack cover over the gear and waited a bit to see if that rain cleared up.
Sadly the rain increased and I decided to call it a day and get back to the car.
I was sad having worked only a few chasers for 14 minutes in a single band, but I thought that the rain would turn the way back and the muddy section complicated.
I packed in a hurry and started the way back with a mixed feeling.
I was glad to have worked some DX, thanks Jean VE2JCW, Steven AK8A, John-Paul AB4PP, Gary W5GDW and Lee K2LT.
I hope my next activation will be longer and I will extensively test these 21700 cells that worked fine today. I will give more details in a future article.
Thanks for reading and merry Christmas!
73 de Ignacio
