I just returned home from my vacation in Lanzarote island.
I was able to activate the planned summit using my VHF handheld radio with 5W power.
Even though the summit (SOTA Summits) wasn’t that high (around 200 meters) its position is ideal for VHF contacts with the other Canary Islands.
After few unsuccessful calls on 145.500 I followed what Guru recommended and I tried a few calls on the repeaters I could hear from the summit. The first response came from Gran Canaria where a nice OM, after telling him I was in a SOTA activation, agreed to try a direct call at 145.450. It worked out very well, with strong and stable signal from both sides. We both were quite pleased with it and, after telling him I was QRP with the stock antenna he was kind enough to “spread the voice” of my activation on some others repeaters. After few minutes more OMs came to the frequency and before the batteries ran out I had put in the log 5 QSO, enough for a valid activation. The wind at that point was picking up quite badly and I decided to get back to the hotel.
I really enjoyed this activation, I wasn’t expecting to be able to actually make enough QSOs but Canary OMs were super kind. Thumbs up for them!
No pictures as, in the rush, I left the phone in the car, however you can find some pictures of the summit from an old Tom’s M1EYP post: EA8 Lanzarote - #22 by M1EYP
73 Gab
EA7JUG - IZ1KSW