6 Sota activation attempts on Tenerife

I visited Tenerife in November 2021 and had a few free days to play radio. I started with some basic planning (most valuable of which was reading other activators' reports and looking closely at their pictures and maps), and printed off some open street maps (linked from Sotamaps). The most useful whole island map that I found on the internet is below - this helped work out which roads were nearest each summit.

Tenerife has 19 SOTA summits in total, and I attempted to activate 6 of them:

TF006 Colorados de Chinoia (not successful)
TF007 Cruz de Gala
TF008 Cruz de Taborno (below)
TF013 Montana de la Atalaya
TF014 Roque de Jana
TF019 Rojar

Wednesday 17th November 2021: TF008 Cruz de Taborno

This is worth 8 SOTA points and pretty easy, although space to get an HF antenna up is limited.

I found it quite tricky to find the path that goes up to the summit - it is not obvious and not sign posted. Not surprising as there is a large Radar installation at the top and I am sure walkers are not particularly encouraged.

I first drove up the short road off the TF12 to Pico del Ingles which is a nice viewpoint. You can park at the viewpoint and walk back to the road junction, or park near the junction where the service road starts the ascent to the summit. This track has a barricade to stop vehicles going up and should not be blocked, but it's possible to tuck a medium sized car against the trees so you don't block access.




I then took a pleasant 10 minute stroll along the service road to the Summit where the radar resides. The summit proper is fenced off and surrounded by dense woodland.


I walked around most of the perimeter fence looking for an of activation location. There are places where you could scramble up to flat areas within the installation, but there are security cameras and of course you would be trespassing. In the end I returned to the top of the service road near the entrance gate. There is a small layby so you can keep out of the way of any vehicles, although nothing came or went in the hour or so I was there.



I propped my Sotapole against the trees and managed a fairly good Inverted V antenna in the clear. One end was attached to the metal gate shown above. 

There is a convenient concrete plinth to set up equipment and provides a comfortable seat. There were no passing pedestrians but I did see one security guard who didn't speak any English. I waved my VHF Handy and I told him I would just be there for 30 minutes. He seemed pretty relaxed. It is worth remembering to bring your license and the CEPT details, and perhaps a printout of the local amateur radio organisation to keep officials happy.

40 m was dead and in fact quite noisy (possibly Radar QRM?) so I moved to 20 M and made 6 SSB QSOs after a sota self spot.

My first successful activation on the island, so I packed up and headed back to the car, ready for the next summit: TF013 Montana de la Atalaya...