25/05/2019

EA7 SOTA Tour - Day 7

After visiting Granada and The Alhambra, it was time for the highest summit on this trip ...

25/May/2019 EA7/GR-051 (Calar) EA7/ON7DQ

Thanks to the first activation by Mark, M0NOM, there was not much to prepare or study, all the info is here.



I used the same parking spot (37.169343, -3.384053) and track as Mark, but I did search and find the "vertice", which is a bit further over the top than you would expect.



The first part is an easy gravel road.




After a while you reach the "Collada de  la Gitana" (1718m), where the road takes a sharp right turn. There we don't follow that road any more and take the mountain track (signposted).
After a while there is a choice between a "low" and a "high" track. We took the "high" one since it looked more used, but I think it doesnt make much difference in how much climbing/descending there is (I only noticed afterwards that Mark took the lower path).

This summit seems popular for all kinds of activities ... we met the following 'locals' : two youngsters coming down the narrow mountain track on MOTORBIKES (meaning they must have gone up too !), a man coming down RUNNING at full speed (dressed in running gear, so I gues this was his morning excercise), and a couple on horseback. We sure must have looked as the odd ones out hi.

The last part is the steepest and involves a little  scrambling over rocks, but nothing difficult or dangerous. The summit is again quite wide and flat. It took us a while to spot the vertice between all the shrubs. Its exact position is here: 37.170120, -3.417689.




With all the open space, I used the longer endfed antenna here (23m wire in inverted-V style on the 6m pole). You can see the 9:1 balun above my head, fixed to the vertice with a short piece of string.
WX was sunny but very windy. The activation was a blast !
I stayed 1 hour and 20 minutes and made 43 QSO's, working my good friend in Belgium (Geert, ON7LG), two DX (K4DY and N4EX) and 2 S2S.
This activation was also validated by the DVGE program, see the report here

I will surely remember this wonderful view on the front range of the Sierra Nevada !




On the way back to Granada, make sure to stop at this picturesque place near Guejar Sierra.
Parking for this view of the "Embalse de Canales" is here: 37.160962, -3.480552.
If you can't go there yourself, see a nice video of it here.



For the next activation, continue on  Day 8

or

Go back to the overview



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