A Beautiful Day.....

Rick, VE3ORY, and his portable set up

What was supposed to be a rainy day turned into an alright one, yeah it was a bit cloudy and the wind was blowing about 30 kph, but it was warm and no bugs......and no rain!

The day started off on a good footing when we showed up for the ferry, only to be waved right aboard, and it sailed within minutes of turning our engines off.  I don't think there were more than 20 cars on board.

We ended up going to a small park just down the road from the Winter Ferry Dock, it's called  "Canal Dock Park", and it's pretty small.  It does have lots of trees as well as some benches and picnic tables though....which all came in handy.

Rick, VE3ORY set up a digital and CW station using his 20m & 40m dipole and was soon on the air. I set up using my MFJ 17' telescopic antenna with a 17' counterpoise for 20m using some Buddipole parts and started to call CQ.

We spent 6 hours on the island, operated 17m, 20m, and 40m, and only made 20 contacts between SSB, CW, and Digital modes, but we had a lot of fun doing it.  Paul, VE3IKY, came over from his house on the island and paid us a visit, and Greg, VE3PJ, arrived and spent the day with us as well.

The bands were in terrible shape with some minor (G1 level) geomagnetic storming going on, and I guess we were actually lucky to make the contacts we did.

The setup of VE3FI on the island.

Remember, any day out playing radio is better than mowing the lawn at home !!