EA8/TF-005: Montaña del Cedro

Posted on by
Reply

This 10 point summit was chosen for today’s activation on the basis that parking should be easy for early arrivals, and that the whole way up is on marked paths. Add in a dead-end dogleg in order to reach the AZ and we should be in for a quiet morning.

Looking NW with Teide and the sunrise behind us

Ascent

We arrived at Mirador de las Narices del Teide when it was still dark, having driven up the TF-38 from Costa Adeje through temperatures which at one point dropped to 3℃, but rose again sharply to 10℃ by the time we rolled into the Mirador. Surprisingly there were already half a dozen cars in attendance, but plenty of room for more.

The start of the trail was easy to find and led off across crunchy lava paths into some low hills. I’m not sure whether this side of the road is part of the national reserve (the other side of TF-38 definitely is) but there was no need to leave the paths anyway, which were fairly easy to follow from one small cairn to another.

After 55 minutes on the clearly marked trail we peeled off to the left onto another smaller path, and 10 minutes later were at the top of Montaña del Cedro. By now it was light enough to see without torches though the sun had yet to break over the horizon.

Summit

The activation zone (AZ) at the summit was predictably strewn with large lumps of cooled lava, and some beautiful Canary Pines made for handy antenna guying points. No issue getting the Tactical Mini up and I also tried re-orienting the EFHW after an hour to see if I could get more out of it in a different direction, but the bands seemed pretty flat.

Contacts

After several attempts at self-spotting (very poor phone reception) I managed to get a shout on on 20m and a few stations started piling in, mostly those who had actively chased me on my previous summits here in the Canaries.

Propagation seemed quite poor today, though I did hear several VK stations and at one point was kindly allowed to break into a QSO between GM1DSK Steve and VK3EY Rob, there was no way this time around that Rob could hear me. A real shame – working VK while QRP portable would have been the icing on the cake today. There were no S2S contacts made despite it being Sunday, and nothing at all on VHF.

TIMECALLSIGNBandModeNotes
08:35EA7GV14MHzSSBs59 r55
08:35EA3ARP14MHzSSBs43 r55
08:37F5PYI14MHzSSBs57 r55
08:39SA4BLM14MHzSSBs55 r53
08:52GM1DSK14MHzSSBs59 r57
09:03F5WBN18MHzSSBs59 r55
09:04EA2BD18MHzSSBs59 r57
09:04EA7ANC18MHzSSBs59 r55
09:052E0FEH18MHzSSBs55 r57
09:06SM4CJM18MHzSSBs55 r55
09:07HB9CYV18MHzSSBs55 r42
09:09EC8ADS18MHzSSBs43 r52
09:11SQ9CMO18MHzSSBs42 r42
09:13SM5LNE18MHzSSBs53 r53
09:56CQ7WWA18MHzSSBs59 r59

Descent

Instead of coming back down the way we came we decided to make a loop of it and follow the previous path clockwise back to the mirador. At this stage we were still full of energy and toyed with the idea of activating another summit, but our chosen route back turned out to be more demanding than expected, and once out of the cooling breeze the rising temperatures sapped our energy. Still, it was refreshing being able to walk among the fragrant, charred Canary Pines and to see the pyroclastic flow from Teide’s last eruption.

Natural air freshener
The last eruption

Also refreshing was the complete lack of people – we didn’t see another soul until we arrived back at the now crowded mirador, where several double-parked cars sprang into life as soon as it was obvious we would be vacating our spot. By now it was just after midday and we were both knackered, so we coasted back to the hotel and took Mum & Dad out for a sangria lunch.

Summary

A nice morning on the hill, with easy paths to the summit, plenty of space for antennas, no other people, and good parking for early arrivals. Had we retraced our steps instead of taking the scenic route we reckon we could have activated this one and been back at the car in 2.5 hours or so, but we also enjoy hiking as well as the occasional Geocache. It’s a holiday after all, right?

Download file: SOTA-TF-005-Montańa-del-Cedro.gpx

EA8/TF-010: Roque del Conde

Posted on by
Reply

Our first ‘big’ one on Tenerife, Roque del Conde carries 8 points for a successful activation with another 3 points available for doing it in winter. And yes, I can’t believe I’m writing that as I sit here with the air conditioning cranked up, nursing a mild touch of sun.

Ascent

We’d earmarked some easy parking in Arona but decided to take a quick peek at Vento instead on our way to the trailhead, and found a spot just a few hundred yards from the start of our chosen route, not too near the local residents who must get fed up with this sort of thing judging by the number of makeshift ‘bollards’ outside one house.

The route we took led eastwards out of Vento into a small gorge, and then up through disused farmland along well-made rocky paths. After half an hour or so of easy walking the gradient increased and developed a sequence of switch-backs, but by then it was almost light enough to turn off our torches and navigate by daylight. In total we took 1h 25m to climb 426m over 3.26 km, and it was all fairly easy, but I was still glad I’d ditched my flight-case and jammed all the radio gear into my rucksack today.

Summit

The top of Roque del Conde is exactly as you’d imagine it from the Costa below; a fairly good sized plateau with plenty of room to move about. This meant that in order to survey the surrounding valleys and rolling clouds we had to walk about a bit first, and seeing as it was just us by that point I decided to last my pole to the trig point itself, hoping that I’d not made some kind of SOTA faux pas. Also worth noting that until we entered the plateau I had been enjoying almost perfect reception from my portable SHARI node, which was running from a battery pack on the hotel balcony way down below. Amazing bit of kit!

Today’s SOTA setup was again the EFHW for 40m, Icom IC-705 with tuner, and the ID-52 for VHF / UHF. My confidence in this setup is growing each day, and I left behind the just-in-case 20/40 Bandhopper and my JPC-12 vertical. Having deployed the EFHW on Roque de Jama two days ago I can’t imagine a summit too small now, though no doubt that day will come.

Contacts

I scanned 40m as soon as I had the wire up and there were a few stations rolling about, but that seemed to dry up quite quickly as the daylight increased. At home I’m used to 40m long skip giving way to EU and then inter-G, but I guess out here there’s no equivalent to inter-G and it all goes quiet on 40. 20m was jumping though, and it took me a while to find a clear space near the QRP centre. I put a spot out and soon had some people coming back to my call, including callsigns familiar from the past two days. Some very dedicated chasers out there!

Nobody from Japan this time, but Ukraine, Slovenia, Slovak Republic and Austria were all well represented, as well as more local EU stations. The icing on the cake for me at that point was Alex GM5ALX/P whose spot I picked up on the tracker, and managed to work a Summit-to-Summit of 3,400 km all the way to Scotland! Bet I was warmer than him. Once I’d reeled in 24 contacts in 16 countries I packed up the antenna just as the first hikers arrived, and wanted to know if we’d camped up here!

2m FM S2S with Raúl EA8AMT

And this is why we start early

We took another walk around the plateau in order to see if I could get my SHARI node again, and I came across Raúl EA8AMT on 145.525 all the way from El Hierro, another island in the canaries, and my second S2S contact today. Absolutely amazing.

Time Callsign Band Mode Notes
08:58 DL8DXL 14MHz SSB s43 r33
08:59 ON4FI 14MHz SSB s53 r55
09:01 ON7ZM 14MHz SSB s44 r44
09:02 OK2PDT 14MHz SSB s55 r55
09:03 DL1EBR 14MHz SSB s59 r59
09:04 IK2ECC 14MHz SSB s59 r59
09:06 SQ9CWO 14MHz SSB s31 r44
09:07 DL1EJG 14MHz SSB s55 r55
09:07 UT5PI 14MHz SSB s55 r55
09:08 OM3CND 14MHz SSB s55 r57
09:10 EA3EVL 14MHz SSB s53 r53
09:11 EA6/M0DLL 14MHz SSB s55 r55
09:13 OE5JKL 14MHz SSB s53 r53
09:14 S58AL 14MHz SSB s51 r54
09:15 F4GYM 14MHz SSB s57 r53
09:16 S52RA 14MHz SSB s53 r55
09:17 I1EEW 14MHz SSB s43 r44
09:18 CT7BOD 14MHz SSB s55 r55
09:18 M7HGO 14MHz SSB s55 r54
09:19 EA2CKX 14MHz SSB s43 r43
09:26 GM5ALX/P 14MHz SSB s43 r31
09:35 CR5WWA 18MHz SSB s59 r59
09:50 EA8AMT 144MHz FM s55 r59 – ID-52 stock antenna 5w

Descent

By the time I’d finished with Raúl there were maybe 12 or 15 people on the summit, climbing on the trig point and generally milling about where my antennas was half an hour earlier. Guessing that there would be more hikers making their way up via the same route which we had taken, we resolved to try and find the other way off Roque Del Conde, and that turned out to be quite a challenging descent, with many opportunities to crawl down backwards while holding on with both hands. I was more glad than ever that I’d stuffed my radio gear into my camera bag for this hike and left the Fuji X-T5 behind, because I don’t think I’d have gotten down here in one piece while carrying a flight case. The return route is shown as a northerly track on the embedded map below, which then flattens out eastwards and rejoins the original trail for a few short meters before ending up back in Vento. I’m very glad we did it this way around.

Summary

A brilliant morning of SOTA, with Roque del Conde nowhere hear as daunting as we may have imagined from the safety of our hotel balcony. The paths to the summit were good enough to have ascended in complete darkness, though it was light enough to switch the torches off 45 minutes before sunrise and we enjoyed an easy hike all the way. The northerly route would have been an altogether different story, at least for a net-new activation. Glad we got lucky and did it this way around, culminating with another summit in the bag and the mother of all club sandwiches for breakfast afterwards. With sangria. Cheers!

Download file: SOTA-TF-010-Roque-del-Conde.gpx

EA8/TF-016: Guaza

Posted on by
Reply

Today we activated a peak close to our hotel on Costa Adeje, TF-016 Guaza. It was another early start and we had intentions of getting up to the top well before sunrise, but our chosen parking location near a local garage turned out to be quite busy despite the time of day, so we looked around for somewhere more discreet and found a nice spot just down the road. Unfortunately this meant walking back up the unlit, busy road without a verge, so we were very glad when we found what looked like an alternative path to the summit.

Ascent

In hindsight we should have just taken the road and stuck with plan A, but after yesterday’s easy jaunt up TF-014 we were feeling confident and headed out into the scrub with our torches. It soon became apparent that this was the kind of ‘path’ where you need occasional use of both hands, and, ideally, daylight. The climb took us just under an hour and was a bit sketchy in places, so definitely not one to recommend. (it’s the south-westerly path in the embedded map below, following Tableros de Guaza)

Taking a breather on the way up TF-016 Guaza

The other disadvantage of not sticking to our original route (nor consulting a contour map) is that our ad-hoc ascent took us to the wrong summit, though getting to the right one was merely a matter of following a short dirt road. By now it was just light enough to see without the use of torches, and as the moon went down behind us the sun rose behind Guaza proper.

Summit

There’s a veritable forest of commercial antennas up on Guaza and I was concerned at the possibility of QRM, though on the plus side there should also be a fairly decent access road to follow down. In the end we had no difficulty with man-made noise, though the 40m band was a tad quiet. Put that down to conditions.

The six metre Tactical Mini was deployed with some bungees to a dead cactus, and I strung up my 40m EFHW a little distance from the commercial installation and the obvious tracks leading through it. In the time we were up there we only saw a couple of walkers, but the summit’s proximity to town probably makes it quite busy at times.

Cactus Antenna

Small rig, big twig

Contacts

The contacts came flooding in after a bit of self-spotting (good phone signal up near those masts!) and in 1h 21m I worked 26 stations all over Europe. Conditions didn’t seem to be as good as they were yesterday though we heard one Japanese station in QSO with somebody else. ZL and VK were also out there apparently but not heard by me. Speaking of which, I still think I need to improve my EFHW’s reception somehow because even on 10w I’m being heard far better than I’m able to receive. Tried twiddling with the filters a bit but without a set of headphones it was ultimately not helpful.

Time Callsign Band Mode Notes
08:20 OK2PDT 14MHz SSB s55 r55
08:22 SA4BLM 14MHz SSB s53 r33
08:23 EA5JN 14MHz SSB s55 r55
08:24 EA3EVL 14MHz SSB s55 r55
08:25 DH5PR 14MHz SSB s53 r55
08:27 IK4CBO 14MHz SSB s43 r53
08:27 EA1MJ 14MHz SSB s57 r59
08:28 DL5OAH 14MHz SSB s51 r41
08:30 M3ZLA 14MHz SSB s59 r57
08:31 EA4GOK 14MHz SSB s59 r59
08:32 HB9DHA 14MHz SSB s57 r52
08:33 EA5EM 14MHz SSB s57 r59
08:35 EA4FGB 14MHz SSB s55 r55
08:37 EA8DGC 14MHz SSB s59 r59
08:37 EA4GJP 14MHz SSB s55 r55
08:38 SQ9JYK 14MHz SSB s55 r55
08:39 EA3ARP 14MHz SSB s54 r55
09:09 EA7GV 18MHz SSB s59 r54
09:10 SQ9CWO 18MHz SSB s43 r44
09:11 ON4FI 18MHz SSB s43 r33
09:13 SM5LNE 18MHz SSB s43 r52
09:15 OK1KT 18MHz SSB s43 r55
09:18 S57ILF 18MHz SSB s51 r42
09:19 DD7UW 18MHz SSB s41 r33
09:39 G0CDX 14MHz SSB s53 r31
09:41 DG4SKN 14MHz SSB s41 r43

Descent

By the time I’d packed everything up it was getting quite warm, and with the arduous ascent behind us we forgot all about taking the long access road down, and instead went to look for the route which we should have taken on the way up. Thankfully it was quite easy to find and yes, would have made for a much easier ascent. It’s the north-south path in the embedded map below, and I strongly recommend it over the other way.

Summary

A great morning of SOTA despite difficulty in getting up the hill. The lesson here is to have a reliable route in place and stick to it, especially when carrying too much equipment in the dark. I looked back at the activity recorded by my Garmin fitness tracker and in terms of exercise load the ascent was roughly on par with a brisk 5 km run. Good to know.

Download file: SOTA-TF-016-Guaza.gpx

Nice shack, wonder what’s inside?

Hubnet Repeater List for Quansheng UV-K5

Posted on by
1

A couple of days ago I sat down and programmed all Hubnet repeaters and gateways into my Quansheng UV-K5 via Chirp, taking the details from ukrepeaters.net to make sure everything’s fresh.

In the spirit of sharing I’m making this file available for download as a Chirp IMG file as well as CSV. If you’re grabbing the former then I’d advise you to download data from your radio first before pasting in the repeater list, then re-uploading the file from your radio. Like most people I’m using custom firmware and taking this approach minimises the chances of you importing something other than the list of repeaters and gateways. The usual caveats apply…

Quansheng_UV-K5_20231208_hubnetDownload

“Cannot create unknown radio component”

Posted on by
Reply

Getting Motorola CPS to run on recent Windows in VM

I’ve had some difficulty in getting my Windows 10 virtual machine to run the CPS software from Motorola which I need in order to program a GM340 for an upcoming project, and thought I’d document the steps taken in case it helps somebody else. The general feeling appears to be that you need an older version of Windows like XP, and/or a physical machine, but with a few tweaks you can convince the CPS to run in a Windows 10 VM, in my case Parallel Desktop on MacOS. Here’s what I did:

  1. Install CPS software, in my case GP300_Application_EMEA_EN.exe which turned out to be version R03.11.16 dated 01.07.2012.
  2. Find the installed executable, right-click, and change compatibility mode to Windows XP SP 3. You can do this via the Troubleshoot Compatibility wizard or via the Properties menu.
  3. Download and install PL2303 Legacy Driver Updater. Run as Administrator and change the driver and roll back the PL2303 driver to version 3.3.11.152.
  1. Reboot the system. It’s a lame thing to do, but makes all the difference here.
  2. Use Device Manager to check that whichever port your USB-to-Serial cable is plugged into is now using the legacy driver which you specified in step 3 above.
  3. Run the CPS software as administrator. The window frame and menu buttons should look like good old XP, and you should see Reading Radio instead of the previous error message.

New Antenna for Home QTH

Posted on by
Reply

Ever since picking up my IC-705 in October 2021 I’ve been dining out on location rather than configuration, at least where the home antenna is concerned; a random-length end-fed with a 49:1, slung up into a tree next to the shack. I’ve had some pretty good contacts using this setup, working QRP far into Europe and occasionally pinging the ding-dong repeater in New York on 10m, but it was always a suck-it-and-see first attempt, a cheap way of finding out which bands I want to focus on before spending more money. I was still chasing my first transatlantic contact when I heard Russ VE9FI one evening in December but, unable to work him on my EFLW I quickly uprooted the IC-705 to the back patio, where my home made EFHW was doing WSPR duty. Blow me if I didn’t get an S5/5 @ 5W, nearly three thousand miles across the pond, on battery power.

An obvious solution would be to throw some more power down the wire, but at the back of my mind it was clear that the wire was the problem. And the power. But mostly the wire. So here I am two months later, with some very nice fibreglass poles and a hastily flung resonant 80m HW, buzzing with excitement at the changes brought about by some fairly simple guying.

Yesterday’s initial attempt at stringing the 40m long stealth wire across the garden in a rotated L configuration produced more of an inverted V, thanks to the luxurious flexibility of my new poles, but adding some guy lines today actually enabled the vertical part to be truly vertical, and I think that’s what’s made the difference between the RF fizzling out at the horizon and providing a truly great take-off angle. All I know for sure is that I’ve not had any WSPR spots from Central America, West Coast US, or China until today.

Going forward I’ll probably add a second 2-section pole to hold the blunt end of the wire, replacing the far too flexible single section that I used as a stop-gap in fading light yesterday.

Another Go with 20m EFHW

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve now had three outings with my first self-built HF antenna, an end-fed half-wave on 20m twirled around a 10m squid pole. The main reason for this design was that I’ve got easy access to the kind of salty beaches that are supposed to work well as groundplanes, but with weather being what it is right now I’ve not had much of a chance to get out.

IC-705 with 20m EFHW on the beach at Garwick Bay

Today could have been such a day, but instead I decided to work portable from the car, perching myself on the Druidale Road above Ballaugh. There was zero noise floor and I was able to work pretty much every station I heard at 10W, with many of them giving me better reports than I was able to give them. The Swiss guys in particular were very strong with me, sounding as clear and loud as traffic on the local repeater.

DA22WRTC Wangen, Germany 20m S5/9 @ 5W
HB9GVW Hans-Martin Burgdorf, Switzerland 20m S5/5 @ 5W
EI3ISB John Dubli, Ireland 20m S5/5 @ 5W
SM5ZCJ Dirk Finspong, Sweden 20m S5/9 @ 5W
OH3GZ Jack Toivakka, Sweden 20m S5/7 @ 10W
F1GOW Jean-Marc Nancy, France 20m S5/5 @ 10W
DK5KN Rudi Königswinter, Germany 20m S5/9 @ 10W
SD7X Jorg Sweden 20m S5/5 @ 10W
DL7GP Achim Berlin, Germany 20m S5/9 @ 10W
GI0AQD David Portavogie, Northern Ireland 20m S5/8 @ 10W
DL1ROT Thomas Berlin, Germany 20m S5/6 @ 10W
DH0GME Elmar Villingen, Germany 20m S5/7 @ 10W
SQ3SHI Mek Grabow, Poland 20m S5/9 @ 10W
HB9SHI Daniel Gruet, Switzerland 20m S5/8 @ 10W
HB9BFY Peter Gossau, Switzerland 20m S5/9 @ 10W
IN3HUY Giorgio San Bovo, Italy 20m S5/9 @ 10W
DK1MHW Hans Altoeting, Germany 20m S5/5 @ 10W
SP8DR Darek Lubelski, Poland 20m S5/5 @ 10W
IU2PKQ Simo Bareggio, Italy 20m S5/9 @ 10W
F/DL4FLY Timm Karlsruhe, Germany 20m S5/5 @ 10W
Selection of contacts made using EFHW from Druidale Road, IO74rh

There was a strong temptation to hang on a few hours and wait for the long skip to come in, but temperatures had dropped to 4℃ as the sun went down and I didn’t relish taking everything down without gloves and a torch. Maybe next time.

https://youtu.be/4LO6kOERY4U
Quick tour of the portable location; Druidale Road near Mount Karrin

WSPRing Success

Posted on by
Reply

Who knew that WSPR could be so easy to set up and so much fun? I took delivery of a Desktop WSPR Transmitter from ZachTek last week, and had it set up and running within 30 minutes of unpacking. Configuration is straight forward via Harry’s own software (Windows only) and apparently the box doesn’t care about SWR since it’s only running 200 mW.

Pint-size Power: ZachTek’s WSPR Desktop Transmitter

Right now I’m using the transmitter via my EFLW antenna when it’s not connected to my IC-705 in the shack, and I’ve discovered that you can use the AH-705 to tune the antenna and then remove the batteries before disconnecting, thus preventing the latching relays inside the AMU from returning to their default positions. In this way the WSPR box thinks it’s talking to a resonant antenna, at least on one band. I’m not sure if it makes any difference, but it’s a lot of fun seeing where I’m being heard in the world via the WSPR.rocks website.

Antarctica on 200 mW, anyone?