The rock is not high, but it emerges directly from the sea - it is impressive and made for photography. climbing to the top is a pleasant walk, but radio activation is a big challenge. I spent a few hours - success 2 qso…
Remember 50,000 years ago the sea level was 30 m lower - all around there was a plain where the Nenderthal hunted and lived in the caves of this rock.
And in about 50 million years, the mountains of African Ceuta will collide with the rock of Gibraltar, because the African plate is moving a few centimeters towards Europe every year. The Mediterranean Sea will disappear or will be very modest and will not be as photographic. We wish you a wonderful trip of photos and qso…sq9not/sq9mdf
Tomorrow is the activation day. But first I’ll be meeting the members of the Gibraltar amateur radio society. After I reached out via the web they invited me to their meeting. I shaved and hope to arrange a sked or two (or four).
I will be hoping for some propagation on 6m. I will be calling cq every 15 minutes (00, 15, 30, 45). 3-4 clean CW calls to get spotted by the RBN and to generate an alert. Frequency: 50.095
After that I’ll call on FT8.
The remainder of the 15 minutes slot will be simplex calling on FM 2m and 70cm and listening/getting on the local repeaters according to the repeater book app.
If I grow desperate, I’ll try the ISS. It would be cool if that worked, but my setup is clearly not ideal.
Starting from around 9 UTC until success or the exhaustion of 3 sets of batteries, but at least until 12 UTC, I managed to arrange a sked on 6m SSB at 12.
One was with an EA6 “provisional” call, we tried to chat in Spanish, he even got his translator on the phone…
One was with another EA6 call, who understood that I wanted his call sign, had a call sign to give me but didn’t stay long enough to give me a signal report;
One was with ZB3P, Rodney from the GARS;
One was with a ham in Tangier, CN2FPU, Eric, we had a lovely chat. It was the first “real” QSO of the day, still feels good.
Heard a reasonable amount of Spanish-speaking traffic on 2m, tried to call in, but no success.
Nothing on 6m, not even wspr managed to hear me.
My Sked on 6m also failed to materialize.
Did hear two passes of the ISS, but not well enough to attempt a QSO. Wasn’t really set up for it in terms of antennas.
So yeah… Activation - success. But I’ll have to get my two points elsewhere.
When I am back I’ll try to write an activation report with a picture or two… Gibraltar is a lovely place and I had a great time.
