This year 2025 I kept on with my SOTA trips, including Portugal (CT), France (F), Açores (CT2) and Iceland (TF). Meeting hams from all these places was always a pleasure, and a nice opportunity to learn about their culture, radio and their amazing places.
I suffered rain, fog and cold at Açores "tropical" islands, and then again while being to Iceland (that was more normal), but on the other hand, enjoyed the beatiful people and mountains around.
Special thanks to: Pedro Cruz CU2JX from Ponta Delgada, David F4JEP from Brive-la-Gaillarde, and Sigurdur TF3CW from Reykjavík. All of them helped me a lot, thank you again!
I have used different rigs during these trips: Yaesu FT-817, Lab599 TX-500, Elecraft KX-2, Venus SW-3B,... and several antennas too, almost all of them being simple wires: 10-20m linked dipole, 20/30/40m trapped endfed, 11m random wire endfed, etc. all of them onto a 6m carbon pole. I have also grabbed some smaller telescopic antennas, but I didn't use them.
Sometimes the Sun, CME's, poor propagation conditions or bad weather made the activations tough, but I always enjoyed them anyway.
I strongly recommend you to live the experience of this kind of radio trips as a nice way to enrich your life experience.
And finally, thanks to these travels I achieved the SOTA Mountain Explorer Award (Silver - CW).
73 de Mikel!
