As I use to do most of Saturdays morning, I left my daughters at the rock climbing training place and hiked with our dog Lucho to the top of the near mountain San Cristóbal.
I didn’t take this picture that sunny day. This picture of Mt. San Cristóbal with the city of Pamplona down in the valley has been taken from the web.
This Saturday of my activation was very cloudy with even some little rain falling from time to time, as you’ll see in the 2 following pictures.
Just before starting my hike, while still in my car, I raised and alert on Sotawatch.
The hike took me the usual 35 minutes and when I got tho the summit and called CQ SOTA, our friend Manuel - @EA2DT came back to my call. We exchanged reports with the rubber flex antenna I was using at that time and later with a home made GP antenna I had brought with me for testing.
This antenna consisted in a full wave vertical wire inside a 3m long telescopic fiberglass pole, with a 1/4 wave radial hanging down in vertical opposite to the driven wire. Everything was inside the fiberglass pole. The measured SWR was very bad, higher than 3:1, but moving it while having it in my hand, I managed to catch a specific position where Manuel’s signal was very good.
After this very brief test, I called CQ SOTA a few more times but nobody else responded, so I went QRT, as I had the time to descent for picking my daughters up in time after their climbing training.
Before leaving, I quickly took a couple of pictures of the nice views to the North, where some snow could be seen covering the very top of some few of the furthest mountains.
Thank you Manuel for the QSO.
It’s always a pleasure having you QRV to chase us any time.
Best 73 de Guru - EA2IF