This Coming Weekend...

Lots of activities coming up this weekend!

First up is the POTA Support Your Parks Spring Event. This starts at 0001 UTC on Saturday, April 19, and runs till 2359 UTC 0n Sunday, April 20. I'm planning on activating a few parks for this event, and hopefully the propagation gods will cooperate for a change.

These events are a good way of boosting your POTA contacts, and of course you can also upload the same log(s) to the WWFF program.

The next event we didn't think was going to happen, but it will be happening after all. That's QRP to the Field. The link takes you to last year's page, but there have been no changes to the Rules for this year. The page will be updated soon, but Paul, NA5N, lost his wife, Jan, N0QT, a week ago and very obviously has had other priorities in his life. 

The third event this coming weekend is the Ontario QSO Party. I have done this contest in the past, but not for many years now. They do have a QRP category.

It's also the Easter long weekend here in Ontario. Enjoy yourselves, but please stay safe.

A Less Than Stella Day...

Today was the first day this year I have been able to leave the house without a jacket and gloves on - it was that warm. Just a glorious day!

Lemoine Point & Kingston Airport

However, as good as the weather was, the bands were not that good at all. In fact they were really awful. I set out this morning with the goal of completing 2 POTA activations, and while it took a lot longer than normal, I did get the job done. 

The QSB was particularly bad, with signals fading from S9 to S2 instantly. This of course caused me to lose a number of otherwise good contacts. 

I started the day on 10m CW and made a couple of contacts into the USA. When those contacts dried up I moved to 15m SSB and made some contacts into the US Gulf states, and as a total surprise Emanuele, IU3LYJ, in Northern Italy called me and gave me an S5 signal report. Then it was on to 40m SSB to finish off the activation.

I took a break for lunch, and met my wife at a local restaurant - which we don't often do. Once lunch was over it was off to the next activation. Conditions had not improved, in fact they had got worse. That activation was done entirely on 40m SSB, and I was lucky enough to work 2 stations who were at different 3fers, which allowed me to complete the activation.

Today was really not the day to be running QRP, but I did, and to make it worse I used my hamsticks mounted to the roof of my truck. If nothing else I proved to myself QRP can still do it even under very poor conditions.

Propagation today was: SFI=165, SN=80, A Index=20, and the K Index=3.

Here's my contact map from the morning activation:

And here's the map for the afternoon activation:

Let's all hope the propagation starts to improve again!

Stay Safe Out There!