Spain's radio hams get SOTA off to a flying start

On August 1st, Spain begun its 'Summits On The Air' activations. Not many up to now.. but the first area activated was EA1.

Several amateur radio ops from EA1 went to summits that weekend to put a SOTA station on the air for the very first time.

We, from Ourense, Galicia, Spain, wanted something more.. we wanted to do the first ever SOTA activation from Spain, from the highest summit in the area.

8 ham ops made the effort to carry all the stuff late in the night to the summit, a 4 hours walk crossing rivers, climbing and taking care of the many cliffs in the area... it was hard but deserved the effort... We got to the summit at around 2am.

Our best QSO was with VK7GK in Tasmania, using a workman mobile antenna and 50watts or less

We carried out a Yaesu 897, two Yaesu 817, several antennas and new systems to test, among then 7 gel batteries (7 ah each) wired together to give us plenty of hours on radio without taking care of the low voltage...

On sunday we had to leave due to nearby storms...

That day, other Galician ham ops were in other summits... and soon more SOTA activations from SPAIN, where this is something new for many.

Enjoy the videos:

PART 1 - Getting to the start point