Saturday 18 January 2014

Kidney Stones...

No operating in the NA QSO Party today for me.  I'm out for the count with a bout of kidney stones.  I thought I might be able to handle it, but the pain is pretty bad and sitting around just makes it worse.  Good luck to all who take part!

Hopefully this will be over in a few days......until then we just keep trying to smile!

Thursday 2 January 2014

2014 Plans.......

Trees to hang antennas - Check!
Salt water - Check!
Well another year has come and we're off for another rollicking 12 months of ham radio fun....but what fun to have?

Like most of you reading this the expense of doing a major DXpedition is really out of the question, but with so much money tied up in equipment you have to do something or SWMBO might get upset!   So what to do?

I've decided that first up will be the activation of three local islands, two of which I have not activated before, ON-175 Block House Island in Brockville, and ON-177 Treasure Island in Gananoque.  I'll also finally attempt a first time activation of Upper Brewers Mill Island, just south of Seeley's Bay.

I'm also going to activate a couple of lighthouses.  The first one will be CAN-815 Portsmouth Harbour Light, which has not been activated within living memory from what the local hams tell me, and then off to CAN-767 Prescott to activate the harbour light there.

These are what I'm going to call "micro-dxpeditions"

Of course sitting here watching the winds blow the loose snow across my backyard as Kingston suffers in a bone chilling -37C with the wind chill, a major DXpedition to Fiji looks pretty good right about now......and damn the expense!