Rideau Lakes Cycle Tour 2013

The 2013 Rideau Lakes Cycle Tour is nearly upon us again.  This year it falls on June 8th and 9th. 

Once again over 2000 riders will scream down the roads from Ottawa to Kingston, spend Saturday night, and then slowly peddle their way back home to Ottawa on Sunday.

My local club will be providing operators to look after six radio check points on both Saturday and Sunday.  The Frontenac Club looks after the Perth Road Village to Queen's University sector. 

This is the 30th straight year that amateur radio has looked after the communications for this event, something of a record I think. 

So far the long range weather forecast isn't looking too good, but we have a week to go yet, and you all know how bad the weather guys are at forecasting.

Washburn Island

VA3ORP arriving

It was a very successful island activation today, and the weather cooperated....somewhat! 

Tim, VA3TIC and I arrived at the Island about 0930L under cloudy sky, but no wind and it was fairly warm.  The bugs weren't too bad either.

Dave, VA3ORP was kayaking down the canal from his QTH in Inverary, and he arrived about 1000L, operating /MM/QRP all the way down the canal.  Dave used a Rockmite for CW and a FT-817D for SSB contacts.  His antenna(s) were a choice of various ham sticks.

Tim and I setup in the parking lot across from the lock station.  Antenna of choice today was a 66' long wire with two 31' radials into a 9:1 balun.  Radio was the FT-857D running off of a 12v 120 amp gel cell.

Thanks must go out to N4DSP for posting the activation of the DX Cluster, and to W4IOW for correcting the call on the cluster.  N4DSP listed us a VE1, not the VE3 we operated as.

Around 1100L it started to rain quite heavily, so with 35 confirmed contacts in the log, 4 Canadian, 2 Spanish, and 29 from the USA, we quickly packed up and high tailed it home. 

The numbers today at 0900L were SFI 133;  SN 146; A Index 21; and K Index 2.  The bands were noisy but workable.

Washburn Island has now been issued its official number - ON-288.

Here are some more photos from today..........

VA3ORP arriving at the lock with his Rockmite
between his legs and the key on his thigh!

 



Picture of Dave's antenna setup

Island Activation

Frontenac Radio Group will be doing a first time activation of Washburn Island, North of Kingston, Ontario, on Sunday, May 19th.

They will be at Lock 45, which is Lower Brewers Lock.  Timing will be 1400 UTC till 1800 UTC.

Frequencies will be 7.250 and 14.250.  Both frequencies will be +/- QRM.  They will have an 80m capability as well if required.  We are hoping the SFI improves a bit as the numbers are not looking good at 2100L on the evening of the 18th May.

Radio will be a FT-857D and the antenna will be a homebrewed 31' vertical.   We will also have a long wire and a 9:1 balun with us to try.  Keep an ear out for us!

This and That

Things have been pretty quiet around the VE3CLQ QTH for the past little while, and as a result the Blog has been quiet as well.

Two weeks ago the 80m OCF Dipole came crashing down in a wind storm after the wire snapped.  The winds that day were a steady 40 KPH with gusts up to 80 KPH, and that brought a lot of branches down as well.  Tim VA3TIC came over a couple of days later and helped me repair the antenna and get it back up in the air.  It was pretty gusty and cold that day as well, but up it went.

Twelve hours after it went back up in the air Tim left for Cuba for a 10 day holiday.....and the antenna came down again in another high wind storm.  This time I took it completely down and scrapped the old wire I had been using.  So it was off to Home Depot to pick up 50m of No. 10 wire and some stainless steel wire clamps.

So then we had the "mini-ice storm" here last Friday that did some major damage to my big trees.  The local arborist was called, and bless them, they were on scene within the hour on what must have been an extremely busy day for them.  Kingston had a lot of trees down that day.

Anyway, on Saturday, with the help of Tim VA3TIC...once again...the antenna is back up at about 50 feet, about 10 feet higher than it originally was, and working like a charm ready for this coming weekends Ontario QSO Party.....of course as I write this we are having another high wind storm here in Kingston, so we will have to see if it survives this time!

There are two new antennas going up shortly.  One is an Arrow Dual Band J-Pole which I used at the old QTH.  This antenna will be used for my new Packet Station.  At the same time my S9v31 31' Mk II multiband vertical antenna will also be going up at the far end of the property, next to the large fir tree.

And that's all the news that's fit to print!

QRP to the Field - 2013

Good news on the 2013 version of QRP to the Field, they have changed the rules to finally include SSB.  Allowing SSB and the twinning of the event with SOTA will certainly bring in more QRP'ers and make for some interesting contacts.

I'm not sure where I'm going to operate from this year, a lot will depend on the weather and what sort of shelter I'll need.  My batteries are already on charge, and I just have to select which antenna I'll use.  I'm really excited to see SSB added to this contest.

Rules and dates for this years QRP to the Field can be found HERE.  Hope to work you on the day!