EA6/MA-060 (Santa Magdalena)

07/May/2017    EA6/MA-060 (Santa Magdalena)

Flying in from Ostend to Palma de Mallorca airport, very early in the morning of Sunday May 7^th , meant I still had the whole day available. So I decided to get my rental car, do some shopping for food and drink, and do a first summit as a “warming up” (sorry for the misplaced term … it was warm to hot my whole stay !).

Approaching my first EA6/MA summit ...

I chose the well documented Puig de Santa Magdalena. 

Note that you can drive up to the church and restaurant, but that is not the real summit.

For our purpose, park at the popular family picknick spot (pos 39.72741, 2.95564), and a 10 minute walk takes you to the summit (pos 39.72104, 2.95688).

Go right here .. the easy path doesn't lead to the summit !

An enormous cross on an even bigger stone building gives enough shade for a comfortable operating position. First station worked was Neme EA6ACW , then Ricardo, EA6AIF, both on 2M FM.

Then I worked a bunch of HF contacts on 20m SSB, and surprise … a first S2S contact with good friend Michael DB7MM/P on DM/TH-001 ! A bit later I switched to 20m CW and worked two more S2S, OK/G4OBK/P and OM4WY/P. Wow, this looked like a promising start of my SOTA tour.

Using hte EA2BD type paddle, in my "clothespeg" version

Here a map of my QSO's (from Log2Map by ON6ZQ):

I almost finished my activation when Ricardo and his XYL Christina showed up. After a nice chat, exchanging all kinds of info on transceivers and antennas … I offered Ricardo to use my setup and activate the summit, since he had not done this one yet.

Ricardo EA6AIF - Luc EA6/ON7DQ

Ricardo also made a short video in his typical "vista panoramica" style ;-)

So another pile-up started on 40m, Ricardo working mainly EA stations …

Ricardo, EA6AIF working the pile-up on 40m

At 5.30 pm, I felt so sorry I had to stop him … but I had to be on time in my B&B in Búger to get my keys. So we said goodbye, but we would meet again ... on the air ! More about that later ... 

View from my room in Búger near Sa Pobla

(to be continued ...)