Tenerife trip 2026

For this years' family trip we went to EA8, Tenerife.

Like last year (see the Gran Canaria report here), I promised the XYL it would not be a SOTA trip, but a relaxing holiday.

But after a visit to some very crowded places at Los Christianos and Playa de Las Americas ... she almost begged me : please, can we do another "peaceful and quiet" summit ? YES, OF COURSE !

So in the end, I still managed to activate 5 summits in our 15 day stay on the island. Several of those were also valid for POTA.

Here comes the report.

NOTE: if you're expecting a report about activating the highest peak "El Teide", it's not here.
The whole administration has gotten so complicated with permits, reserving a time slot, reserving and paying for a parking spot, the cable car etc etc. , it made me decide it's not worth the trouble.

Like last year, we stayed in three different AirBnb places, to get a feeling of the different climate zones, and used those places as a starting point for some excursions.
1 = Golf del Sur, 2 = Las Caletillas, 3 = Chayofa. 

We had a Dacia Sandero rental car for the whole stay, driving 754 km in 15 days.

My equipment was basically the same as last year, containing the KX3 set and a 9.15m 'random wire' antenna, with 9:1 UNUN and 4m counterpoise. A 6m carbon pole, reduced to 5m by taking out the thinnest elements.

As a backup, I had a Komunica HF PRO 2 PLUS T telescopic vertical, but I have not used it for SOTA. I only made a few QSO's with it from the terrace of our second apartment.

Backup rig was my QCX Mini 15/17/20m with a linked 3-band endfed + Fuchs tuner, also not used.
I did use the linked antenna from that kit once, to do some WSPR tests with my WSPRLite.

OK, time to get on with the summits !

12/5/2026   
EA8/TF-019, Rojar - 173m, 1 point -  POTA ES-1732

Parking spot 28.037782, -16.548196 
We saw some reports in the news that cars are often broken into at this parking spot, so don't leave anything valuable in the car !

We used the same track as Heinz, OE5EEP. Very easy to follow.

No shadow anywhere, so take enough water.

This is the last part to the top.

I fixed my 5m carbon pole to the railing, but made sure it leaned out to the outside, so as not to hinder any other visitors (and there were many). I operated sitting on some flat stones, putting the KX3 on top of my backpack.

We had a nice view all around, here a view of the village of La Tejita and the beach with the same name. It was also fun to watch all the planes take off at the nearby airport.

Result : 19 QSO's, with 1 S2S.

The next day we did the walk through the Malpaís de la Rasca at Palm Mar. See info here
A view over the area from the lighthouse, and the island of La Gomera in the distance.

14/5/2026

EA8/TF-018, Güímar - 278m, 1 point  - POTA ES-1731

On this day, we had to move to our next AirBnb. Along the way, I planned to activate this summit.
Parking spot 28.315219, -16.380938

NOTE : The track that was published by Heinz, OE5EEP is now forbidden !

They even dumped a bunch of stones on the start of the track to make the passage difficult.

Since we had already parked, we took the flat walk around the summit to check if we could ascend from the East. There is an information panel at the start of the walk.

At this position: 28.311416, -16.373640, we could see the start of a track, and with the help of my phone, we could easily follow the track to the summit marker.

This is the complete walk.

At the top, the wind was very strong, so I took shelter behind the fallen "vertice" (see picture above). My carbon pole was fixed to some bush, and the wind blew the antenna wire in a curve, but it still worked OK.

I kept the activation short, and made 18 QSO's in 20 minutes, but alas no S2S this time.

Our second AirBnb was in Las Calletilas, just North of Candelaria. It had a large roof terrace, where I used the Komunica telescopic antenna for a few QSO's.

15/5/2026
EA8/TF-008 Taborno 1020m 8p  -  POTA ES-2210  +2070

This day, we first wanted to visit the Parque Rural de Anaga

Studying the route, I had seen a special street in the city of La Laguna ... I just had to go over there for a picture ! (if your Spanish is not so good, the street is called Radio Amateur Street)

We then made the typical tourist stops at the "Miradors" along the TF-12 road, and took the walk along the "Sendero Bosque de los Enigmas" and the "Sendero Hija Cambada", which were still nice, despite the wet and foggy weather.

After that, we arrived at the summit of Taborno, which is an easy drive-up summit.
Take the small forest road at 28.535128, -16.272175, see map below. Drive carefully, the road is in bad shape, but can be driven with a regular car.

Parking spot is 28.536057, -16.269830, in front of the gate to the radar station.

Walk a little back and there is a clearing in the forest, which is in the AZ (altitude 1010m). 

Since it was very wet, I also kept this activation short, and made only 5 QSO"s, no S2S.

We continued the trip to the viewpoint at Pico del Inglés, but after seeing this ...

... we called it a day and returned to our apartment.

Later that day, we took a nice walk along the coastal promenade, from Las Caletillas to Candelaria.

Interlude

On Sunday May 17th, we visited the nice town of La Oratava, famous for the many balconies, and the sand carpets.  100% worth a visit !

Here a view of the beautiful Victoria Gardens (Jardines del Marquesado de la Quinta Roja).

And now, back to SOTA !

18/5/2026

EA8/TF-013 Montaña de la Atalaya - 778m, 4points

Parking spot  28.497442, -16.344608, in front of the "Ermita Santa Rita" 

We followed the track from the Sota Maps website by Joe, OE5JFE. This track contains a short but steep section.

At the summit, you have a nice view over the area (see picture above). We had taken our lunch, and had an enjoyable stay on the summit, amidst the smell of the eucalyptus trees.

Note that when in need, there even is a toilet on the summit 😁

The activation went well, and I could even make a few QSO's on 2m FM, with stations from Tenerife and Gran Canaria.

Using my FT1D and Chinese telescopic antenna

Result : 25 QSO's with 3 S2S.

We didn't want to descend the steep part of the track, so we chose to go down another way.

I posted this track on the Sota Maps page, it is a bit longer but less steep, and as a bonus, it goes through some nice wildflower fields (at least in May it looked very nice).

21/5/2026

EA8/TF-014 Roque de Jama - 762m, 4points

We left our AirBnb at 07:00 local time, and started our ascent at 07:30, trying to avoid the heat.

Parking spot 28.095092, -16.641025, where the road is a bit wider, place for several cars along the wall.

We followed the track from the Sota Maps site, by Mikhail, LB8CG.

Halfway our ascent, I took a picture where you can see where we parked (see the yellow arrow).

At the summit, we first took our breakfast, then it was time for SOTA.

I could fix the carbon pole between some rocks, and found myself a nice operating spot near two rocks, that have a third rock lying on top of them, I wonder who put it there ? 😉

Result here : 35 QSO's with 3 S2S.

And that was the last summit of this trip ... but I still had some "radioactivity" planned.

21/5/2026

The same evening was also the 

NTC QSO Party

Now our AirBnb in Chayofa was a large house with FIVE bedrooms !

(and a jacuzzi and a large (shared) swimming pool).

So I chose one of the top floor bedrooms as my shack, and could easily put up my 9.15m random endfed.

Above you can see my improvised shack, with the KX3 and a small Panasonic Toughbook, running N1MM+ for logging.

Result : 9 QSO's, with even one DX contact, not bad for only 15W and a piece of string !

 

My log:

or on  a map:

So far for this report. The last few days were spent making a car tour to see El Teide from a distance, and really some 'relaxing' ... that was what I promised the xyl after all, right ? 

See you soon for another adventure!

73,

Luc ON7DQ

 

My version of the TinyGawant antenna

I learned about the TinyGawant antenna on the SOTA Reflector, in a discussion about antennas for the QMX QRP transceiver. 

Read more about the origin of this antenna in this pdf document.

It uses the same principle as a "Fuchs antenna", but the resonant half-wave radiator is replaced by ... a short whip of only 1.2m! One can not expect a big performance of such a small antenna, but my curiosity made me look for some parts in my junkbox and build one anyway ... it never hurts to try, right?

N6ARA makes available a kit with a 3D-printed box (see here), but shipping it to Europe would be very expensive. Luckily, there is  a nice construction manual here , it has all the info you need.

I made a box out of pieces of PCB, and after measuring, drilling, filing ... the PCB parts were ready:

I provide a banana jack (red) near the whip, to connect a longer wire for experiments, and also a ground jack (black) for a counterpoise.

 After mounting most of the components, this was the intermediate result ...

The final stage was soldering it all toghether, mounting the T50-6 coil, and the resistive SWR bridge.

A back cover was made from clear plexiglass, since people will ask me over and over again "can you open the box to see what's inside? Nooooo, just look through the window! ;-)

My polyvaricon has a maximum capacity of 285 pF, so the high and low ranges would overlap. 
I increased the total number of turns to 28, keeping the tap at 12 turns.

This gives a tuning range from 60m up to 10m, in two ranges. The 20m band can be tuned in the LOW and in the HIGH range.

I first did a test as a receive antenna on a Kenwood THF7E, and must say it is a nice small receive antenna. The tuned network acts as a bandpass filter in front of the receiver, which will never hurt.
Switching in the tuning network gives a 6 dB attenuation, which is useful on the low bands (60/40m) in the evening.

But then I wanted to see if you can use this antenna to transmit ...

I set up the TinyGawant on a small magmount on a baking plate, and used the IC-705 at 5W to do some test transmissions for RBN.
I could tune the SWR to 1.0 on all bands except 15m, where I couldn't get it below 1.5
I sent a message (TEST RBN DE ON7DQ ON7DQ TEST RBN) 5 times on each band from 60m to 10m.

Maybe propagation was bad at the time of the tests (May 7th, 2026), but the only band where I got some spots was 20m, see screenshot below.

All other bands were ... well, just nothing !

Peter, HB9EBE reported a bit better results on the SOTA Reflector.

Maybe the fact that my small garden is surrounded by walls on all sides is a factor, and I should try it another day, and in the open ... to be continued.

Conclusion : yes it's small and handy, it's quite good for receive, but it will probably not save your SOTA or POTA activation if you forget your "big" antenna ...

Happy tinkering !

Luc, ON7DQ