Story 49DX/E468 Story from 49DX/E468 illa Grossa isl activity (Part one, Saturday 04/07/2009). Grossa island is close to Botafoch E-088, once 49DX/E088 was QRT, we packed all the equipment into the car and proceeded to drive back down the causeway until we came to an entrance signposted " Carrer DE S' illa Grossa ", what looked on GoogleEarth like a nice road onto and up to the top of Grossa isl, it turned out to be a track with massive holes, big rocks and all sorts of obstacles positioned along the way which made the journey up to the top a bit scary. Every now and again the Engine sump of this little hire car kept hitting hard against the rocks, the suspension kept bottoming out, I had visions of a broken engine sump, broken pipes and oil leaks, once we made it to the top of illa Grossa island I quickly got out of the car and looked underneath, everything looked fine, the only evidence of us going up that track was a fine covering of dust on the car, this is nothing unusual, every car on IBIZA isl has this customary covering of dust. Anyway, car looked fine, so it was down to business, Sean and I started (AGAIN) putting the antenna together while Ryan unravelled the RG8 mini coax, the only structure we could find to fix the antenna too that an oddly shaped tree, Sean lifted up the antenna and stub pole while I proceeded to tape the pole to this tree, in the rush to do this we hadn't noticed this tree was seeping sticky sap, not only that but the tree was covered in very large ants which must have been feeding on this sticky sap, anyway one of Sean's arms was now caked in this lovely tree substance with black ants munching away, while Sean dealt with this I quickly unpacked the iCOM 706MKIIG and connected once again the power cable to the car battery. Again, before the activity started we took loads of photos and video footage, some showing Botafoch island which was down below, once this task was done, the real fun started again. 49DX/E468 illa Grossa island on the air. After a quick check of the SWR, the first call was made, this first call was met with a very strong pileup on .570, obviously many knew the island wasn't far away from our previous island, they were laid waiting on .570 and the adrenalin rush of working a pileup begun once more, stations / friends quickly worked were 328SD105 Sinisia, 1AT581 Franca, 161AT080 Jarek, 163SD136 Steve, 26DX059 Bill and finally a weak and underpowered station made it through the pileup with the callsign of 26AT114 (hi Paul!). Just like on Botafoch, we were fortunate of having decent propagation, a few pages of the logbook was soon filled, once again time flew by, towards the end the predictable mid-afternoon blackout started to take effect, but we'd already planned for this, so it was time to pack up, replenish our reserves and make plans for the evening stint of our island tour. That's about it from Part one of 49DX/E468, thanks to all that called in. Until the next one. 73 de Darran 26DX047 Ryan 26D193 & Sean ( no callsign ) return