After reaching the Tutuiatu peak, the second part of my Macin Mountains adventure on May 3rd 2014 took me to the peak of Iacobdeal (Jacob’s Hill, SOTA designation YO/MM-005, WWFF designation YOFF-161), only 341m tall, standing above the village of Turcoaia. This whole mountain is a big rock quarry and there is a road for the tracked excavators right up to a few meters from the very top.

Unfortunately, the little Renault is not a match for such roads and we had to leave it about halfway, continuing by foot for about 30 minutes. The spot where we left the car was a great point to observe the Iacobdeal Lake, wich is a unique element in Romania’s geography; it appears to be of glacial origin but it is actually man-made, formed in a pit a bit too deep of the old rock quarry. Unfortunately I somehow forgot to take a picture, but you can find some really good ones on this nice travel blog.

The hike is not very spectacular, the only … notable things are of industrial origin.

Once you get to the top though, you experience the much-needed satisfaction: the village of Turcoaia and the Dunarea Veche Lake (The Old Danube) lay below making for a spectacular landscape.

In distance, we can see the village of Greci with the northern chain of the Macin Mountains standing right beside it. There’s a clear view of the Tutuiatu peak I just had visited a few hours before.

On the southern side of the mountain there are farmlands, a rich palette of green shades.

Now, enough about the dreaming, I went there for the radio :). I installed my equipment on the very top, and the strong wind was constantly bending my antenna to the point it almost flew away.

In case you didn’t read the article about the other peak in Macin I’ve activated on the same day, the equipment was:

– Yaesu FT-897D
– LDG Z-100Plus
– 12V/7Ah SLA
– fishpole vertical, 9:1 UnUn

Unfortunately, there was a big contest going on and the band was almost packed with contest stations – hard to squeeze in for a 25W portable water pistol like me. I managed to work 25 stations – all on 20m, and recognised alot of calls I worked earlier that day or the previous weekend from YO/EC-057.

All in all, two new peaks activated in one day, a memorable trip and a bit of improvement of my physical shape, pretty happy with how it went.

Logs are uploaded under YO9IRF/P to LOTW, eQSL, SOTA, HRDlog, QRZ.com, Enzolog and are good for both SOTA and WWFF programs. Electronic QSL model from Enzolog: