EA6/MA-065 (Puig de sa Cova Negra)

13/May/2017    EA6/MA-065 (Puig de sa Cova Negra)

UFO landed on the summit ?

This is an easy drive-up summit, and I picked this one for the EU<>NA event, so as not to lose a lot of time. I wanted to have a maximum operating time, and took more stuff with me than usual, since it was only a short walk.

From the streets of Capdepera you can already see the strange platform on top of the summit. It is another VOR-DME installation like on EA6/MA-077.

The road is slowly winding up the hill, I had no problem to drive to the gate, and park my car at 39.697435, 3.434079

Parking just to the right of the gate

Path is waiting around the corner ...

Then looking back, where the rocks end, is the start of a short path (scrambling up the rocks), and leading to the trig point. From there you have some nice views over the VOR-DME and the area.

VOR-DME at Puig de sa Cova Negra

In the distance : EA6/MA-063 (Jaumell)

After taking some nice pictures, I set up the antenna using the "vertice" as a support, and found a  nice spot in the shade to operate.

Endfed antenna tied to fishing pole, 9:1 UNUN in the foreground 

Operator in the shade !

After a while, the PA temperature of the KX3 showed 50°C, I knew because I noticed the power going down to only 5W. So it was time for some extra measures ... luckily I had carried my small umbrella ! Tying it to my backpack with a velcro strap was enough to keep it from blowing away, and after a short break to cool down the rig and the operator, I was ready to continue.

KX3 needing extra shade ;-)

With over 2 hours on the summit, the results were not that spectacular, 29 QSO's in total.
I didn't work any NA summit, but got one DX : KA1R on 17m SSB.
I even tried some PSK for a while, but got no replies at all ...
But I got 5 S2S from EU in CW/SSB, so I could still call it a succesful (and HOT) activation !
Here the map of my QSO's (from Log2Map by ON6ZQ):

(to be continued ...)