Activation EA8/TF-014: Roque de Jama

This morning marked the first SOTA activation outside my home association, and it also gave me the largest number of stations worked during an activation as well as the longest DX contact on 10w. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

We left the hotel in Costa Adeje at just after six and drove for 25 minutes on good roads to an easy parking location for TF-014. As noted by @M0NJH the start of the path is indeed between two houses and very much feels as though you’re walking into somebody’s back garden - I’m not sure I’d have ventured down there in complete darkness without a an established GPS track to follow, or at least a high resolution hiking map on my device. Watch out for a gate on your left with two angry dogs.

The path itself is easy to follow and splits & recombines several times as it snakes up towards the summit. Like so much of the island the surface was volcanic rock and dry earth with the occasional loose section, and I think if I were to do this in the wet then I’d want some decent walking boots, but we were OK in trainers. The climb to our activation zone took about 25 minutes, and I can only apologise to the wild goat we nearly stepped on near the top. Not sure who was more shocked there!

The actual summit of Roque de Jama is a craggy spire of rock at the end of a ridge and we could just about make out enough detail with our head torches to tell us that a) I’m not going up that, and b) the ridge leading to it also commands respect. Having determined that we’re inside the activation zone I secured my 6m Tactical Mini to a dead bush between two crags, strung up the EFHW, and started calling CQ on 20m around 07:45 as the sky was turning a lovely shade of pinky purple.

The antenna worked very well and in the space of about an hour I made 36 contacts using my Icom IC-705, first on 20m and then on 17m. My only disappointment would be that I seemed to be getting out somewhat better than I was receiving, as many stations gave me better reports than I could give them, and it was hard at times to determine if somebody was coming back to me or if I was hearing faint QRM.

My PoLo Portable Logger app tells me I averaged 65 QSO / hour for the last 10 so I must have really been into my stride by then, but I was getting quite tired and beginning to wonder if we could get back to the hotel before they clear away the breakfast buffet. By then I’d also managed to work my furthest DX ever on 10w in the shape of @JE1SSE: 7,687 miles to Ichikawa City just outside Tokyo, r55 s55. Thank you Hidy, that made my day!!

Having worked for over an hour on 20m and 17m I didn’t try the other bands and didn’t even switch on my ID-52. Instead we packed everything away and made it back to base following an uneventful descent. Fantastic start to our fortnight in Tenerife - many thanks to the kind folk who guided me during the preparation phase!

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All agreed… but if you flank the summit on the left on a fairly straightforward path, you can reasonably easily get to the true summit. I recall one short rock step. Of course it is pretty airy, but not too intimidating.

I did retrace from the summit to activate in pretty much the same spot that you did.

Congratulations on the contacts, much better than I achieved.

I’m also impressed at your early start… back in time for breakfast!

Great photos.

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Gotcha, cheers. It was pretty dark at the time, and we were full of anticipation of getting set up after an enjoyable climb. Nearly stepping on that goat didn’t help either, so when the SOTA app confirmed that we were in the activation zone we decided to ignore the rocky spire ahead.

Looking back at a picture taken next day from TF-016 Guaza it’s not exactly a spire anyway, more of a little ridge. Maybe next time …

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