Get Ready For.........

As the trustee for this callsign I want to let people know that coming up next year, XM3CARF will be on the air from 03 June 2017 to 03 July 2017 to help us celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the founding of The Canadian Amateur Radio Federation.   

CARF was Canada's first successful national amateur radio society and existed between 1967 and 1993, when it was amalgamated with the Canadian Radio Relay League to form the Radio Amateurs of Canada.

CARF was founded here in Kingston, Ontario, by Art Blick VE3AHU, Doug Burrill VE3CDC, and Ken Rollison VE3CRL.  These three fine gentlemen are all now Silent Keys.  

XM3CARF is sponsored by the Frontenac Radio Group and plan on having the call on the air everyday we have it, including Field Day and the Canada Day Contest.

A Change in the Shack......

Some of you may have noticed that "The Adventures of VE3CLQ" title above has been changed to "The Adventures of VE3FI".  This is because I recently managed to get this two letter callsign......thanks to Russ, the original VE3FI - who is now VE9FI.

Many thanks need to go to the Amateur Radio Service Centre in Sault St. Marie, who's help and patience were fantastic......they couldn't have helped more if I had asked them to.

Russ had some great luck using this call, so let's hope it rubs off here in this shack as this years Contest Season prepares to kick off.

A Great Saturday on the Bands

On the way to activate Wolfe Island, ON-009, we had beautiful clear blue skies, warm temperatures, and humidity through the roof!   It was definitely cooler than last weekends Lighthouse activation though.

We had a number of stations on the local Thousand Islands, all manned by guys from the Frontenac Radio Group.

Propagation wise the bands had been in rough shape for most of the week, but Saturday rolled around and the numbers weren't too bad:  SFI=82, SN=44, A Index=6, and K Index=1, and the "go-to" bands were 20m and 40m.  I also made a couple of contacts on 6m.

I operated from the Winter Ferry Dock on Wolfe Island, a nice quiet spot RF wise with lots of good shade.  In fact I only spent the last half hour of the day in full sun, so it's a great spot.

Antenna for the day was a Buddipole Vertical, which performed fantastically, if I could hear them - I could work them.  However, I am going to cut some extra elevated radials, as the one supplied with the Buddipole kit needs more.  It works fine with just one, but I would think it will do even better with several.

By noon the bands were full of stations operating in the Ohio and Kansas State QSO Parties, several Venezuelan stations contesting as well as many Polish stations all calling in their contest.   In fact it became quite difficult to find stations in the Island QSO Party due to the high number of stations all calling CQ.  

All in all it was a great day, 45 contacts in the log including 7 islands.

W/VE Island QSO Party 2016

Coming up this weekend is the W/VE Island QSO Party.  Held each year hams on both sides of the border are asked to activate an island for the day, or weekend, to help promote the island programs.

I've decided to keep things simple this year and I'm going to activate Wolfe Island, ON-009.  Last time I was there we activated the island from the winter ferry dock and found it an excellent location to operate from.  That's where I plan on being again this Saturday.

Rules can be found HERE.

Frequencies for the day will be (+/- QRM):

7.250
14.250-14.260
50.125
144.200

Hopefully the propagation Gods will smile!!

A Pretty Good Day......

Greg-VA3GGF operating on 20m

Yesterday was a pretty good day at Nine Mile Lighthouse on Simcoe Island.  The weather was great, in fact it was probably just a little too hot judging by the suntans I saw this morning at the clubs breakfast.

We had two HF Stations up and running.  The HF bands worked were 40m and 20m and we made a total of 35 contacts, including five 2m SSB contacts.

Radios were both FT-857D's and the antennas were a 31' Chillycon Special, and a Buddipole 1/4 wave vertical on 20m, along with a 10 element 2m Yagi for some pre-arranged SSB work.

Best DX of the day was with GB2LBN at Barnes Ness Lighthouse, 30 miles east of Edinburgh.  Didn't think I was going to get him, and I managed it on the second call.

Today we were going to go to Point Petre in South-West Prince Edward County, but....the weather is atrocious here with very high winds and monsoon style rain.....so that expedition was cancelled.  Point Petre is very exposed to the weather and is wide open to the Lake.  In fact the next thing you would see looking west is the City of Hamilton!!  In this wind I doubt we could have got an antenna up, and have it stay up.

This year saw 471 lighthouses registered for this event, it's a great shame the propagation wasn't better, but it's that time in the solar cycle!

10 element 2m yagi

Rick-VE3ORY on 40m