This is the report on our trip to Mallorca (EA6/MA) from August 27 to September 12, 2023
I have been
on Mallorca Island on my own in 2017, when I activated 17 summits in 15 days.
See my previous report here.
This time, I was travelling with my YL, so I would have to reduce the number
of activations you would think ?
Well ehm, no
… not much.
In summary,
we spent 17 days on Mallorca, and on 9 of those days, I activated 8 SOTA summits, 5 POTA parks, and 3 DVGE “vertices”,
so 16 activations in total. Not so bad eh?
Of course,
to be honest, this involves a bit of cheating: some SOTA summits count for POTA and
DVGE at the same time ;-)
In chronological order, these are all the activations. Click on the DAY to read my detailed report, click on the NAME to visit the summit/park/vertice* info page)
Day 2 : EA6/MA-065 Puig de sa Cova Negra
Day4 : EA-1247 Cova de can Bordils Natura 2000
Day 6 : EA6/MA-035 Puig de Sant Salvador
Day 9 : EA-1899 Pla de Vilafranca Natura 2000
Day10 : EA6/MA-077 Talaia d'Albercutx
Day 11 : EA6/MA-040 Talaia d'Alcúdia
EA-1195 La Victòria Natura 2000
VGIB-006 – REG Atalaya de Alcudia
Day 13 : EA6/MA-032 Santuari de Cura
EA-0204 Sa Dragonera Nature Park
Day 16 : EA6/MA-060 (Santa Magdalena)
VGIB-093 – REG Santa Magdalena
NOTE : for the DVGE vertices, click the link above, then on my activation page, click on the pdf symbol (below the map), to visit the official info from the IGN (in Spanish).
More info about the DVGE program can be found on the website of the Radioclub Henares
Equipment
My SOTA
equipment was still more or less the same as what I used in 2017, only I took a
lighter carbon pole and home made stake. Also my antenna has changed from a
link dipole to a random endfed.
Here is the list :
Rigs :
KX3 with a
5€ PC-headset and homemade PTT box for phone, and for CW the Palm Pico paddle + a homebrew
magnetic “click-on” paddle (which I used most of the time).
QCX Mini
17m/20m, with “clothespeg” paddle, and a light linked EFHW for use on 17m
or 20m + 49:1 UNUN
FT1D for
VHF and APRS (not used very often)
Batteries :
Home made
Li-Ion battery pack 4S2P, 16.8V when fully charged. I used this one with an
automatic voltage reducer so that the KX3 could always be used at 15W (12W on the higher bands).
Backup :
powerbank with 4 x 18650 cells, and an empty
battery holder to put those cells in series when I removed them from the
powerbank (never needed to use it).
Antennas :
Endfed wire, length 9.15m + counterpoise 4m, and 9:1 UNUN (for quick setup or reduced space summits), and an extension of abt. 13m, to get to a longer 22.3m (only used where I had enough space).
Coax : 5m RG-58 (backup : a 50 cm RG-58 jumper cable , never needed)
CARBON fishing
pole 6m, 3 top sections removed (too brittle), so effective length only 4.5m.
+ ground spike made of a piece of L-shape aluminium, same length as the pole, 42 cm, so all fits nicely inside my backpack, and the weight is half that of the 6m pole + spike I normally use.
Fixing the pole to the spike is done with two rubber cable binders from old Dell laptop adapters.
Results
In total, I made 350 SOTA QSO's, an average of 44 per summit. I had a peak of 85 QSO’s on EA6/MA-060 Santa Magdalena.
Two activations were only for POTA, where I made another 35 QSO's.
Also nice … 32 Summit-to-Summit (S2S) contacts, an average of 4 per summit. This secures my first place in the S2S ranking for Belgium with 5743 points. Of course, that position will only last until Peter ON4UP will catch up ...
This trip, I collected only 17 SOTA activator points, but that does not matter much, I had a lot of fun being out on the summits.
Continue reading this story, go to ... DAY 2
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