Yet another sunny day in the Algarve, so I decided to activate two parks which are only a 15 minute drive from each other, and both a little north of Loulé. The first one was Rocha da Pena. I found a little road on Google maps which leads to the sub-top of the “Rocha”, a little east of the summit. This appeared to be an absolute top location. Great take-off (and view) from North-west over North to South-west. And it had a pick-nick area with a roof to keep the burning sun away from the set-up. So the station was set-up rapidly and I was on the air at 11:09utc on 30m. Activity on a Monday is considerably less than on a weekend. The rate was low, maybe conditions were also deteriorated compared to the days before. I never could raise a pile-up and it took almost an hour to get to the required 44 QSO’s to make it a valid activation (as an activator).
Fortunately, North-European signal came in quite loud on 10m, so I could make some QSOs there as well. Very few intercontinental stations made it into the log (2 NA and 2 AS). At 12:22utc I pulled the plug in order to pack and move to the next park. Here are the stats:
A 15 minute drive brought me to Fonte da Benémola. This is basically a park along a river valley. Therefore I chose a location at the edge of the park and not in the valley (bad take-off) which is the main tourist attraction. At the west side I found a spot with a good take-off to the North. The station was set up quickly and I was QRV again at 13:48utc. Conditions seemed to be slightly better as I could raise some little pile-ups on 20m this time. On the down side, I encountered some local noise on 21 MHz and up. Maybe due to solar panels or a high-voltage line which was rather close-by …
At 15:08utc I called it a day with 79 QSOs in the log, but again with hardly any DX, only PY2CX on 10m (quite loud …). Here are the stats:
Logs have already been sent to the new CTFF log coordinator, Slavomira, CT7ARW. Look out for the next activations from CTFF-0886 (new one) and CTFF-0077.
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