Pico Jano! What a lovely summit! It’s nestled on the outskirts of the Pico De Europa mountains and as a result you can see all three of the major massifs that make up this lovely mountain range. It qualifies for Summits On The Air (SOTA) and as a result was very much on my radar during our holiday in the region, especially as it had only been activated twice before.
I activated Pico Jano (EA1/CT-036 Pico Jano – 1446m, 6 points) as part of a 4 hour walk I did with my YL, starting and finishing in the village of Dobarganes. We picked up the well signposted walking route from the village and didn’t have any issues following this all the way up and down:
Pico Jano Walking Map we used
The weather was once again nice, a clear day with the temperature hovering around 20 degrees. A perfect day for a walk in the mountains and a SOTA activation.
After about 1.5 hours of walking up we got to Pico Jano:
Goats on the approach to Pico Jano
Me on top of Pico Jano trig point
Upon arriving at the summit we took in the wonderful views offered up here and my YL started eating our lunch (without me!). This was my time to act and act fast! I quickly deployed the Yaesu 817 and SuperStick MP1 vertical antenna on the summit and spotted myself on the SOTA website. Sure enough the SOTA chasers started rolling in and band conditions proved to still be good after the previous days activation of Pico Casanzo (EA1/CT-021).
At this point I still hadn’t realised I was only running the Yaesu 817 at 2.5w and not the full 5w. This was my fourth and final activation on our holiday in the north of Spain and I didn’t realise until later that day!
The calls cames thick and fast on 20m with Sean MW3PZO being first in the log. The best DX this day was Phillip VE1WT who was the fourth chaser in the log. This was a result because on 2 out of my 4 activations out here I hadn’t even made it back to G let along across the pond and this was on 2.5w SSB!!
In fact my YL (Christina) had started shooting a video of the activation and captured me working VE1WT:
I finished up working 15 stations in 16 minutes, until I had run the pileup dry. At this point I decided to not push my luck as lunch was beckoning and the main focus of the day was the walking and not my SOTA activation (which was a happy bi-product).
Looking across the summit of Pico Jano – it’s long and narrow!
Now that’s what I call a shack with a view!
Me mid-pile up on Pico Jano
| Time | Call | Band | Mode |
| 12:11z | MW3PZO | 14MHz | SSB |
| 12:13z | DF5WA | 14MHz | SSB |
| 12:14z | G6TUH | 14MHz | SSB |
| 12:15z | VE1WT | 14MHz | SSB |
| 12:15z | OE7WGT | 14MHz | SSB |
| 12:16z | G0VWP | 14MHz | SSB |
| 12:16z | DL8UVG | 14MHz | SSB |
| 12:17z | GB2IWM | 14MHz | SSB |
| 12:18z | G0TDM | 14MHz | SSB |
| 12:18z | OK3KW | 14MHz | SSB |
| 12:19z | G8ADD | 14MHz | SSB |
| 12:21z | PA7ZEE | 14MHz | SSB |
| 12:22z | G4WHA | 14MHz | SSB |
| 12:22z | M3FEH | 14MHz | SSB |
| 12:27z | G0RQL | 14MHz | SSB |
Conclusion
Pico Jano was a lovely summit to activate on a beautiful day. It proved a lot easier to get to than Pico Casanzo (EA1/CT-021) the previous day and the walk was moderate compared to all the other walks we did in the Picos.
Conditions were good on 20m and truth be told I would have liked to have spent longer on the summit playing radio but I kept it short to retain domestic bliss!
A great summit to round out a lovely trip to the North of Spain. There would be no more SOTA as we travelled to Gijon the next day for a friends wedding.
A farmhouse in Dobraganes village