Sunday 12 June 2016

Rideau Lakes Cycle Tour

Don, VE3MNE
It's been a very busy weekend here in Kingston as the Rideau Lakes Cycle Tour took place and the Frontenac Amateur Radio Club provided communications for it.  Including setup and tear down time we were on the job twelve hours on Saturday and seven on Sunday, and 0445 came real early Sunday morning.....

The weather was not the warmest over the weekend and we saw very little of the blue skies we looked forward to.  In fact we spent most of the weekend in sweatshirts and jackets to stay warm.   Instead of good weather we got high winds and a bit of rain.

Thanks to the rain our setup at Perth Road Village was a bit muddy for Don and I, and the winds did not help getting the 24' mast up into the air.

We had two stations on the air at Perth Road Village.  One was a liaison station on the VHF Lanark Net and the other was our own net control on the UHF Frontenac repeater.  We had a 5/8 ground plain 2m antenna on a 24' mast and a 7 element yogi for 440 on a 16' painter pole.  Both worked as designed.

There were 2023 cyclists on the road at any one time this year.  The tour goes from Algonquin College in Ottawa to Queen's University in Kingston on the Saturday, and on Sunday it goes back to Ottawa over the same routes.

Over the weekend the communications teams only had to do two 911 calls for hurt riders, but due to the rain and cold temperatures on Sunday we had a lot of requests from the cyclists for pickups and rides as they dropped out as they were not dressed for the cold.

We have some changes to do for next year, they have moved our usual site at Queen's to a new location at the other end of the campus. Unfortunately the new location is in a very bad location for radio work.  So it looks like we have lots of testing to do.

It was great to see our old friends from Ottawa, who provide the mobile communications in the support vehicles on the route.

The RLCT 2016 is over.......and now we get ready for Field Day !!

Mike in "Repair 2" in action at Perth Road Village
The "Command Post"


Riders at Perth Road Village


Leo, VE3BLR at Inverary

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