CT/AL-001, Serra da Foia – VHF useless!

Saturday, July 2, 2016

Trying to avoid the forest fire which devastated some of the area throughout the morning I arrived at the summit with Mrs DBS. If possible I would like avoid the fire…

Around 0835z we stopped at the military gate of FAP’s Radar Station nº1 while trying to reach the trig point.

Well… Backpack on the back and XYL by side! Walking through the small bushes i took a deeper look and I realize the trig point is inside the military facility!

Suddenly I understood what CT2JLS and CT1DRB wrote on SOTA mapping: their descriptions become clear about the track they took and the places where they had done their activation!

Move on…and I went to the place where Phil, CT7/G4OBK made the activation, i e, parking the car and using a small unoccupied area are near the summit entrance (triangle).

Because I had made the promise to do some calls in the 2 m SSB I had a cheap microfone with me. So, before calling in the 2 m band I made some calls around 7181KHz which were answered by 3 EA stations.

At 0905z I made the first QSO with Manuel, EA2DT, with whom I contacted many times using CW, while activating SOTA summits.

After 3 QSOs in the 40 m band, while the firefighting helicopters made the scooping down the valley, I decided to move for the 14 MHz band, where 14 QSos were made.

Two of those QSOs should be emphasized. One with KA1R, Matthew (5245 km) and the other with João, CT1BQH, at Entroncamento (ground wave).

Because I intend to activate CT/AL-004 later on, I decide to save the battery, just in case…It’s fair to say the 10 W/SSB and the 4 W/CW did a good job…But cw is cw… J

At 0941z, the pileup dried. After the last QSO in the 20 m band, I made a few calls at 144.05 (cw) and 144.3 (SSB) but the background noise was very strong (S9+30) and no station was heard.
So, CT/AL-004 is useless for VHF QSOs.

I packed up the gear and take the road to CT/AL-004, Serra de Monchique!

SOTA “mast” and schack into the landscape

The trig point inisde the military radar facility

The VHF Slimjim defying the “big boys”. We loose!

Using HF/CW

North view from the summit – A firefighter helicopter preparing to scoop