Tag Archives: EFHW

EA8/TF-010: Roque del Conde

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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.

TimeCallsignBandModeNotes
08:58DL8DXL14MHzSSBs43 r33
08:59ON4FI14MHzSSBs53 r55
09:01ON7ZM14MHzSSBs44 r44
09:02OK2PDT14MHzSSBs55 r55
09:03DL1EBR14MHzSSBs59 r59
09:04IK2ECC14MHzSSBs59 r59
09:06SQ9CWO14MHzSSBs31 r44
09:07DL1EJG14MHzSSBs55 r55
09:07UT5PI14MHzSSBs55 r55
09:08OM3CND14MHzSSBs55 r57
09:10EA3EVL14MHzSSBs53 r53
09:11EA6/M0DLL14MHzSSBs55 r55
09:13OE5JKL14MHzSSBs53 r53
09:14S58AL14MHzSSBs51 r54
09:15F4GYM14MHzSSBs57 r53
09:16S52RA14MHzSSBs53 r55
09:17I1EEW14MHzSSBs43 r44
09:18CT7BOD14MHzSSBs55 r55
09:18M7HGO14MHzSSBs55 r54
09:19EA2CKX14MHzSSBs43 r43
09:26GM5ALX/P14MHzSSBs43 r31
09:35CR5WWA18MHzSSBs59 r59
09:50EA8AMT144MHzFMs55 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!

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EA8/TF-016: Guaza

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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.

TimeCallsignBandModeNotes
08:20OK2PDT14MHzSSBs55 r55
08:22SA4BLM14MHzSSBs53 r33
08:23EA5JN14MHzSSBs55 r55
08:24EA3EVL14MHzSSBs55 r55
08:25DH5PR14MHzSSBs53 r55
08:27IK4CBO14MHzSSBs43 r53
08:27EA1MJ14MHzSSBs57 r59
08:28DL5OAH14MHzSSBs51 r41
08:30M3ZLA14MHzSSBs59 r57
08:31EA4GOK14MHzSSBs59 r59
08:32HB9DHA14MHzSSBs57 r52
08:33EA5EM14MHzSSBs57 r59
08:35EA4FGB14MHzSSBs55 r55
08:37EA8DGC14MHzSSBs59 r59
08:37EA4GJP14MHzSSBs55 r55
08:38SQ9JYK14MHzSSBs55 r55
08:39EA3ARP14MHzSSBs54 r55
09:09EA7GV18MHzSSBs59 r54
09:10SQ9CWO18MHzSSBs43 r44
09:11ON4FI18MHzSSBs43 r33
09:13SM5LNE18MHzSSBs43 r52
09:15OK1KT18MHzSSBs43 r55
09:18S57ILF18MHzSSBs51 r42
09:19DD7UW18MHzSSBs41 r33
09:39G0CDX14MHzSSBs53 r31
09:41DG4SKN14MHzSSBs41 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.

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Nice shack, wonder what’s inside?

New Antenna for Home QTH

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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.