We should have tried simplex...

While I was wrapping up the SOTA activity this morning on la Serreta d'Alcoi (EA5/AT-088), I saw I could easily reach the 145.600 MHz repeater atop the Javalambre (EA2/TE-002) with my handheld. I called and I made a contact with Víctor EA2EPS through the repeater. He was at Peñas de Herrera, east of Moncayo (not SOTA, 1461 m above sea level).

The fact that I could reach Javalambre (SOTA EA2/TE-002) without problems, is confirmed by in this profile I computed using  heywhatsthat.com (the repeater was 165 km away).

 

EA2EPS told me he was at the Peñas de Herrera, but if he was exactly at the highest point, at 1461 m high (not a SOTA summit), he could also see the summit of Javalambre, more than 190 km away.

 

That repeater in Javalambre is so well placed. In fact, curiously, Víctor and I had Javalambre almost exactly in the middle: 

 

If I had known this, I would have asked Víctor to try simplex; if lucky, it would have been a 350-km contact! Why? Sometimes, when there is only one rocky obstacle right in the middle, it diffracts the radio waves and makes contact possible. This is sometimes called the knife-edge effect (see my previous post https://ea5iyl.blogspot.com/2023/08/knife-edge-effect-in-2-m-and-70-cm.html).