Trip to EA7 - thanks for all the help

Old Reflector
1

Hi all,

Thanks to everyone who provided advice and guidance that helped make my first overseas SOTA activation a success.

I activated EA7/AL-003 Calar Alto for what appears to be the first time. This is a surprise to me as you can drive to within a few metres of the summit at over 2100m ASL by using the road that goes to the optical telescope observatory. There is one very large dome and several smaller ones.

Thanks in particular to SV2OXP who first provided an excellent 10 point to 10 point Summit to Summit from SV/MC-027 in the Macedonia region of Greece.

It was great to work so many chasers that I don’t usually speak to at home where I mostly work on 2m.

But it was also nice to hear some familiar voices from back home too like G6ODU, G4UXH and M3XIE.

Hopefully out again tomorrow. Watch out for the Alerts.

73
Gerald
MW0WML (currently in very sunny and warm EA7)

2

In reply to MW0WML:
Well today didn’t work out. I got greedy and went for another 10 pointer EA7/AL-004. But this is another “drive almost to the top” hill, which has a number of Telecoms towers on it. Anyway, the short story is that wherever I moved I couldn’t get less than S8 of noise on 20m or 40m (the only HF antennas I had) and I got no response at all on 2m FM.

I didn’t manage a single contact.

The road up is “interesting”, with a lot of hairpins - I’ll share some photos when I get back.

I’ll have another go again tomorrow if the weather holds.

Anyway, back to the hotel and the brilliant water slides so all was not lost!

73
Gerald
MW0WML