Hello SOTA friends,
I just publish a set of nice pictures that worth to share…
Yesterday, 6th December 2017 I met Jorge EA2LU and Santi EA2BSB for a triple activation.
We choose Mt. Larrazpil, thinking we would have little snow, but we found there was more than expected.
After parking, at -2ºC, left to rigth EA2BD, EA2BSB and EA2LU:
Behind us while climbing, we saw the peaks of Mt. Beriain (NV-015) and Artxueta (NV-032) and the moon up above:
Approaching the summit, we passed next a megalithic tomb (dated about 2000 years B.C.):
Lovely winter forest covered in snow. We decided to get out the very summit to activate in an open space:
and stayed in the wide plateau:
EA2LU station:
Elecraft KX2 + EFHW inv vee.
Jorge sat and was the first to start the activation running on 7 MHz CW, having soon a pile up.
By misfortune, he hadn’t fully charged his battery and after a while his KX2 shut down, refusing to work anymore. What a pity! Anyway he logged a decent number of stations.
EA2BSB station:
Yaesu FT-817 + telescopic whip MFJ 1899 T
Santi decided to give a go to a tiny telescopic whip he hadn’t test before.
He hanged his 817 from a tree and extended the whip, tuning 20m SSB. He had no SWR even without any counterpoise.
The whip, with its 1,32 meter length was enough to work some locals, but was too short to work EU chasers being the propagation such poor nowadays… He called for some minutes but finally had to use my station to complete 4 in his log.
EA2BD station:
LNR LD-5 + EFHW
I separated well from Santi and Jorge to avoid interference and installed my antenna inverted vee using a carbon fiber pole hold by a fence; SWR was fine on 14 MHz.
Today I had the second run on my LD-5 which couldn’t be tested on SSB on my previous activation due to a failure on the VOX settings with my headset.
This time I disabled the VOX and built a separate PTT adaptor to manually activate when transmitting. It worked fine!
(I sat using a small sleeping mat over the snow…)
I first run on 14 MHz CW and logged just 7 stations. Few chasers and band conditions difficult. I switched to 14 MHz SSB so that Santi could complete. Finally I run a bit more on 10 MHz CW and logged 5 more.
To end the activation, Jorge and I worked S2S OE5AUL/P, thanks!
It was a great day for testing and walking on the snow.
VY 73 and see you soon
Ignacio.
