VE2/ES-012 Owl's Head

Hello,
Owl’s Head mountain is located in the beautiful “Estrie” region (pronounced: ess-tree) just beside lake Memphremagog,this is an area where there are a few other referenced summits close by.

I arrived at the base of the mountain as scheduled leaving me with plenty of time to arrive at the summit wich i did 15 minutes in advance with enough time to take photographs and install the station.
The weather is perfect,no wind and not too hot.

The mountain is quite steep… this gave me a good workout !
I have brought along a Yeasu FT1DR wich was used for APRS.
Once at the top the terrain is flat, what a relief ! …but surprise… the summit is still a bit higher where the towers are located.

The access starts off by some wooden stairs and now it really gets serious. The passage becomes narrow and really steep now with some rock climbing. This section is indeed dangerous but was done in about 10 minutes.

It is almost 1800h loc (2200h utc) and
I quickly install the equipement while some flies and mosquitos buzz all around me hungry for some flesh.
I made many calls before i could get my first contact 12 minutes later.
The 3rd station spotted me so i quickly got a little pileup. (thanks Gerry VE2AW).

The better signals came from stations in Colorado and Arizona but the big surprise was again EA2IF Guru who stayed up late at night to make contact with me ! :relaxed:

Great signal as usual Guru and many thanks for waiting on me !
Here’s a little video EA2IF /VA2MO qso
I was caught by surprise and quickly grabbed the camera without adjusting focus…

I also brought along my 3 element 2 meter “tape measure” yagi, and it proved to be working quite well on FM and SSB, a few contacts were made in both modes and polarization.
The stations worked on 2m FM and SSB were in between 88 and 153 km away !
17 qso’s in total: 6 on 2m and 11 on 20m.

After a little over an hour the battery was drained so i started heading back down, i arrived at the car at 2025h loc. (0025h utc) just 30 minutes before sunset.

A great hike,nice views and a few contacts.
A very satisfying adventure !

Photo album here

73 :slight_smile:
VA2MO
Eric.

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