W/VE Island QSO Party, 2018

Simcoe Island Ferry

Coming up this weekend, to promote the U.S. (USI) and Canadian (CIA) islands programs to amateurs worldwide, and to promote verifiable amateur radio contacts with stations located on islands in the U.S. and Canada.

Always a relaxing time and a lot of fun, looking forward to being on Simcoe Island, ON-022, and I will also be able to hand out the Nine Mile Point Lighthouse number, as I will be set up right there.  The Lighthouse is CAN-578.

Hopefully the weather forecast for Kingston this weekend is either wrong, or it changes from what it is supposed to be, and let's hope the propagation gets a little bit better.

Rule for the event can be found HERE.

Nine Mile Point Lighthouse, CAN-578.

International Lighthouse Lightship Weekend

Get ready......this years edition of the International Lighthouse Lightship Weekend is coming up on August 18th & 19th !!

Details of the event are HERE.

The objectives of the ILLW weekend are to promote public awareness of Lighthouses and Lightships and bring to the attention of the public the need to preserve and restore them for future generations.  In doing so we also promote amateur radio.

I'm still not sure where I'll be heading off to....choices, choices, choices!!  There is a page listing all Lake Ontario Lighthouses ( HERE ).  I'll have to spend an hour on the site and pick one before next weekend.

Let's hope the propagation improves before next Saturday otherwise it will just be another good day of suntanning !!

Saturday at the Bay...

The view from the portable shack.

While we had great weather, hot and sticky is a good description for last Saturday out at Hay Bay.   Don VE3MNE, and I, went out to his property, the one we use for Field Day, and tried to work the guys in Colorado up on the Colorado 14er's and those taking part in the Rocky Mountain Rendezvous.

At 1406 UTC the propagation numbers were, SFI = 69; SN = 0; A Index = 6; and the K Index = 2.   We also suffered most of the day with very deep QSB on all bands.

20m seemed to be the band of choice, very little heard on 40m and 15m, but 6m was pretty active.

Not only did we work the Colorado SOTA operators, I also worked a couple of other interesting stations.

N1S, a special event station in Massachusetts at the Derby Wharf Lighthouse, US-224.

WA5DTK, operating aboard the battleship, USS Texas, located at San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site in Texas.

W6PNG, operating from SOTA summit W6/WH-008, located at the north end of Death Valley in Southern California.

Radio used that day was my FT-897D, and the antenna was a 80m OCF Dipole up at 90'.