The island is a couple miles off the northeast shore of Lake Erie in Ontario, Canada.
Keep your eyes on the POTA spotting page on Sept 30 for K2EAG/VE3 (CW), N3ARB/VE3 (SSB), VE3GKT (SSB/FT8/4) and VE3JZT (CW/SSB).
They will operate phone, digital and CW, on as many bands as possible.
Another Chillycon has come and gone, and what a camp it was this year! We could not have asked for better weather, five days of brilliant sunshine with decent temperatures in the high 20's most days, and not a drop of rain.
A number of the usual regular campers did not attend, although two of them did in fact come and spend most of a day with us. Obviously the change of dates from purely a weekend event to a mid-week event didn't suit some people. I understand next year it will go back to a weekend event only.
The propagation forecast for the week did not look too good at first, but actually things worked out very well, and we had a few days in a row of really good propagation for a change.
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| The winning DX Contest Station |
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| Don VE3MNE and Matt VA3UMM building an antenna |
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| The gathering of the minds.... |
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| Eric VE3DN presenting the DX Trophy to Eric VA3DXP |
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| Eric VE3DN with Eric VA3DXP. |
Yesterday was a great day to be out doing portable radio. It was dry, warm, and very sunny.....and yes, the propagation wasn't too bad.
Propagations was: SFI=139 SN=86 A Index=7 and the K Index=1.
I went to Lemoine Point and did two activates at the same time, I activated it for POTA, and I took part in the QRP Afield Contest for a few hours. There did not seem to be too many QRP'ers about, but I still managed to get 22 in the log.
I started off on 40m and it wasn't too bad, there was a bit of QSB, but nothing that couldn't be worked around, and all of the contacts were within the usual 40m range. The band soon dried up and after 14 in the log I decided to move to 15m and see what I could do there. First up was Jose EA1BUL, from Asturias, Spain, he gave me a 59 signal report. He was immediately followed by two back-to-back K6 stations out of California. The band seemed to change and I finished the day with 3 contacts into Florida. Not too shabby for a KX3 at 10w and a Hamstick!
Here's the days contact map:
This is one of the few QRP Contests, that I have found, that allows all modes - and it runs from 1500 to 2100 UTC. Six hours of QRP bliss!
Rules for this event can be found HERE.
Looking forward to working some of you in the contest.
As an added bonus, the weekends propagation doesn't look too bad.....well, after this weeks surprise CME, it couldn't get much worse. However, here's the forecast for Saturday, the 16th:
I had a great day today activating Lemoine Point, VE-5141, for POTA. The extremely high heat and humidity of last week has gone away, and the weather is certainly more autumn like these days - and I'm loving it!
Today's propagation was mediocre at best. There was lots of very deep QSB going on, and this was coupled with high noise on 20m and 40m. The propagation numbers were: SFI=161, SN=127, A Index=8, and the K Index=1. Having said it was a mediocre day, it was the best day we have had for over a week.
The antenna today was my 29' vertical random wire, with a 9:1 unun, and three 17' ground radials. The radio was my KX3 set at 10w.
While todays contact map is nothing spectacular, I had a pleasant hour and a lot of fun working the park hunters.
Here's todays map:
Stay Safe Out There!!
"The geomagnetic field is expected to be primarily at quiet to unsettled
levels on 1 Sep due to weak, positive polarity CH HSS effects. By late
2 Sep to early on 3 Sep, active conditions are expected, with a minor G1
storm level more than likely and a chance for moderate G2 conditions,
when the 30 Aug CME is now predicted to arrive."
Let's see how this plays out over the next few days.
Stay Safe Out There!
