This year the dates and times are: 1200 UTC July 30th to 1200 UTC July 31st.
Rules can be found HERE.
Have fun, and stay safe!
I decided to finally get out and do a POTA activation today. The bands have not been the best over the last couple of weeks so I have not been up to too much. I read today that the experts are calling what has been going on a "Propagation Tsunami" of back-to-back CME's and Solar Storms.
Todays propagation numbers while I was activating were: SFI=111, SN=83, A Index=17, and the K Index=2.
I drove down to Lemoine Point, VE-5141, and in 26 minutes had 24 contacts in my log. Contacts were made on both 20m and 40m.
Here's todays QSO map:
Radio in use today was my KX3, set at 10 watts. Antenna was either a 20m or 40m hamstick, both worked very well.
Hopefully the bands will now start to behave and settle down.
My hope was that I could set up Hamsticks for two different bands, and just use a coax switch to change bands, it would also speed things up in the long run.
So with this in mind, last week I decided to conduct an experiment with two 20m Hamsticks. One would be mounted on the roof of my van with a 6" single mag-mount. The other would be mounted on a camera tripod, and would have five 17 foot ground radials set out.
I set up my KX3 and went searching for a very loud 20m CW signal, and there were lots to chose from that day.
The coax for both antennas was connected to a two-position switch, with a RF isolator placed in line between the switch and the radio.
Wow, what a difference!! The hamstick mounted on the van roof was 4 db louder than the one mounted on the tripod. I knew there would be a difference, but not that much. Obviously this is not going to work for me.
Hopefully I'll come up with another idea before the snow flies again this year.
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| The set-up in the back of the van. |
Over the past few years the event has seen very few Canadian Lighthouses on the air. We have lights on our three coasts and the Great Lakes, surely we can get a few more lights on the air this year?
The website with the Rules and Registration page is HERE.
Let's see if we Canadians can support this event better!
This doesn't look too good!! This is the forecast for Monday to Wednesday. Wednesday does not look to be a good day for chasing DX or POTA stations.
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On June 19th I wrote on this blog that I would like to see what the QSO pattern difference was between my operating using 10w and hamsticks versus my using 5w and a 40m EFHW up at 33 feet.
The EFHW was set up as a sloper along the East to West axis.
One difference in this experiment is that I changed operating locations by 115 km (71 miles) to the west of my home QTH. Another difference is that I dropped the power from 10w to 5w so I was legal under the Field Day rules.
So was there a difference? Well, not really. If you look at the QSO maps I have published over the past few months in the articles below this one, and then have a look at my Field Day contact map shown below, you will see virtually no difference in the area my contacts are made in.
Here's my stations Field Day map:
To me this shows that the difference between a 40m EFHW and a properly tuned and set-up 40m hamstick is negligible.
Stay Safe Out There!
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| My station, with the KX3 |
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| Don, VE3MNE, not believing the propagation numbers Saturday evening! |
The preparations continue for Field Day. This year we are travelling 90 minutes west to Grafton, Ontario, to a site we have used before, when our normal site was underwater a few years ago.
The weather forecast so far is calling for no rain, and hopefully the propagation Gods smile upon us both days, although it looks like we may have a rough start on Saturday according to Space Weather.
Don VE3MNE, and I are heading out Friday afternoon to get the camp set up and to try and figure out where we can site and hang our antennas. This year we plan on operating as a 3A station, made up of a SSB station, a CW, and a digital Station.
The antenna line-up, so far, is a 20m/40m linked dipole dipole, and several EFHW verticals for different bands. Friday evening and Saturday morning will be spent getting these antennas in the air and checked out....and perhaps making a few POTA contacts.
Stay Safe Out There!!
It certainly has been a lousy weekend for doing portable radio. The weather was fine, the band conditions not so much!
On Saturday the propagation numbers were: SFI=149, SN=152, A Index=13, and the K Index=2. The QSB on both 20m and 40m was very bad on both days, with S9 stations disappearing in seconds and coming back as S1 or S2 before fading away completely.
The map below shows my contacts on both 20m and 40m. The majority were on 40m, which is opposite to what was forecasted for that day. 20m should have been the "go-to" band, but it was nearly dead.
Next weekend, June 11th & 12th, is the 49th running of the Rideau Lakes Cycle Tour, and the 14th year the Frontenac Radio Group has provided communications support for the event. After a two year hiatus we have managed to scrape together enough volunteers to look after our normal communications locations. This Saturday will be the first time in 2 years we have had the whole gang together, in person, since Covid hit us.
We do have the threat of rain on us this weekend. It's only a 30% chance, but it's not a thing we need or want. The last time we got hit with cold rain was 10 years ago, that year 60% of the riders went down with hypothermia with the tour being abandoned half way, and riders evacuated by bus back to Ottawa.
There are only 1300 riders registered this year, the numbers being reduced from the more normal 2100 due to covid concerns.
For those hams who regularly use the VE3FRG repeater here in Kingston, please note it will be out of service next weekend and reserved for the Bike Tour traffic only. If you need a repeater please use the VE3KBR repeater on 146.940- with a 151.4 tone.
If you're in any of the locations shown on the map below over the weekend, please watch out for the cyclists.
I still think they are silly rule changes, nobody will change my mind on that. It's called "Field Day"....not "Sit at home and operate from the comfort of your Shack Day". Field Day is supposed to make you think, and operate, outside the box. It was designed to make you travel to, and operate portable from an unprepared location, and then compare your results against those of the other participants who had done exactly the same as you had.
This is now hard to do when operating from a temporary field location, operating from batteries, using less than optimum wire antennas, when the people you're comparing yourself too are using 1500 watts with professionally installed towers and beams...all from the comfort of their normal home shacks. It seems to me that the whole spirit of Field Day has been thrown away in order to make the event "bigger and better".
This year I have decided that I will in fact operate during the event. I have been invited to Northumberland County to take part in a QRP Field Day. You know, 5w maximum, and only home-brewed wire antennas allowed. I'm going to have fun, tell tall tales and swop lies with friends I haven't seen in two years, and I will ignore those lazy individuals who decided to stay home and operate from the comfort of their own homes instead of following the true Spirit of Field Day.
It's going to be fun.
Stay Safe Out There!
Over the past two months I, and others, have noticed two things with propagation. The first thing is that when the forecasted numbers are bad, we're still making good contacts. The second thing is when the forecasted numbers are good, there's no contacts to be seen.....anywhere.
Today was a good example. The forecasted propagation. numbers were: SFI=102, SN=34, A Index=24, and the K Index=3. It certainly didn't look very good, as an example the SN was at 110 a few days ago. Today we also had some extremely deep QSB, which made making contacts, and hearing contacts, much harder.
The picture to the left shows the 20m EFHW antenna with the 40m extension, and the home-brewed centre piece to hold it on the mast.
Using an analyzer Don, VE3MNE, and I ran the numbers on the End-Fed. Just configured as the 20m antenna, and without the extension to take it down to 40m.
The numbers where: 14.040 it was 1.9:1 and at 14.340 it was 1.8:1. While it is usable, it wasn't so good on 10m, 28.040 was 2.5:1 and at 28.450 it was 2.4:1.
It worked very well for me on 20m. I went QRT with 13 contacts in the log after 20 minutes. This little antenna will definitely get some more use this summer.
Here's todays activation map:
As for the propagation numbers? Yeah, I think I will continue to note them, but ignore them...maybe I'll make more contacts that way!
Stay safe out there!
Another day in the park, and another day of bad bands and deep QSB. The propagation numbers today were SFI=173, SN=154, A Index=10, and the K Index=3. The good news is that it was blue skies, sunny, and 22C, which certainly made up for those cold activations I did last winter.
Today was probably a good example of when not to use QRP power levels, but I still managed to have a successful activation, it just took longer. As usual I was running 10w with my KX3, and hamsticks for my antennas. There was no room at the activation site to set up a EFHW or a dipole.
It took me over an hour today to make 16 contacts, my slowest day ever...so far. The QSB on 20m and 40m was terrible, quite possibly the worst I've heard it this year. S9 stations disappeared in nano-seconds...never to be heard from again.
I only managed to get 2 contacts on 40m, and they were both local. I must have called on 40m for 20 minutes with no luck before I moved to 20m which turned out to be a bit better, but you still had to work to get the contacts.
It's a long weekend here in Canada, so hopefully the bands will improve so we can enjoy ourselves!
Here's todays QSO map:
What a great day it was, the temperature got up to a fantastic 23C. I couldn't let that go to waste, so it was off to play some portable radio with the KX3.
Once again the actual propagation numbers belied how the bands were actually performing. Propagation numbers this morning were: SFI=119, SN=89, A Index=6, and the K Index=1. However, there was very deep QSB on 20m which certainly didn't help matters. It took me exactly 30 minutes to make 20 contacts, the furthest of which was in Washington State.
After 13 contacts I moved to 40m and made another seven contacts there. I had been sitting on 14.297, and out of nowhere a noisy Over-the-Horizon Radar (Russian or Chinese??) started up on that frequency and that was it.....time to QSY to 40m. The IARU Region 1 Monitoring System has been trying to keep track of these interlopers, who seem to keep popping up all over the 20m, 15m, and 10m bands. I am going to suggest that this will continue as long as the conflict in Ukraine continues.
Apart from the QRM and the bad QSB, it was very nice to be able to operate outside in shorts and a t-shirt again.
Todays QSO Map:
This rig will not replace my KX3 for portable operating, for one thing it's quite a heavy little rig, but it will be more a back up rig in the shack.
I've had my main rig, the FT-950 for 12 years now, and while it's a fantastic radio, I simply do not use it to its full potential. I'm no longer contesting these days and I feel it's just a waste of radio sitting on my bench. It will probably be on the market soon.
Tomorrow I'm off to the park for our club weekly meet-up, and will be taking the FT-891 to give it a first work out to see what it can do. Stay tuned for news on that.
Stay safe out there!!
Getting up early on a Sunday morning, and going off to play radio, is starting to become a habit!! It was a great day, blue skies and not a cloud to be seen anywhere. In fact it was 18C when I was in the park, not too shabby for the 1st May around here.
It works on most bands, and tunes down to 1.5:1 for many of them, a couple were 2.1:1. I can not use it on 80m, 17m, or 12m, it just won't tune them at all. It's not really an issue as I don't normally activate on those bands anyway. I must try this antenna with a 4:1 Balun and see what changes with it.
So how did I do? Well let me start off by saying that the propagation was not the best (that's also becoming a habit!!). We had very noisy bands with deep QSB, signals were S9 one minute and gone completely the next.
Propagation numbers for today: SFI=120, SN=50, A Index=18, and the K Index=3.
However, I did manage to work three stations in Florida, WB4TDH, N4II, on CW, and N4Y on SSB. All three were taking part in the Florida QSO Party. Best contact of the day goes to G7SQW, Andy, who was activating a park in the UK, and my mighty 10 screaming watts grabbed him on my first call. I'm very pleased with that contact, especially considering todays conditions!
It looks like we have a wet week ahead, so I will have to squeeze any of my planned POTA activations in between the rain drops.....the good news is that it isn't snow in the forecast!
Stay safe everyone.
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| A nice spot to play radio! |
The propagation numbers this morning seemed to be a lot better than they were yesterday, so off I went after breakfast to the Marshlands Conservation Area, POTA VE-5143, and set up to activate the park.
Let me tell you that the propagation numbers that popped up on the space weather website, had nothing to do with what was actually experienced on air. The published numbers were: SFI=160, SN=118, A Index=12, and the K Index=1.
It took me 90 minutes to make 14 contacts on three bands, 15m, 20m, and 40m. Not at all what I expected when I started. That is the longest amount of time I have ever spent on an activation so far.
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| Close up of the actual mount |
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| Todays QSO map |
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| Bob, hard at work trying to make at least one contact! |
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| Bob's Xiegu X5105 in action. |
Yesterday I did yet another POTA activation. The bands have been not cooperating over the few days, and I was getting cabin fever not having decent conditions.
As it was a "Support Your Park" weekend, I really wanted to get out and do a very quick park activation, and lucky for me the propagation numbers improved just in time: SFI=122, SN=78, A Index=8, and the K Index=2. Those numbers are a vast improvement on what we have had over the past week.
The bands were very busy as we had the POTA event, the Ontario and Michigan QSO Parties, and on Sunday we also had the first ever Quebec QSO Party. It was very difficult to find an open frequency to start calling on.
I spent some time on 20m, and then moved to 40m. The map below is interesting because you can clearly see the contacts made on each band without even tagging them.
QRP to the Field is an annual operating event to encourage QRPers and SOTA stations to get out of the house and operate portable from the field or a local summit. Find a nice operating location for yourself, or combine it with some buddies for a day-long adventure. QRPTTF encourages participation by QRP hams of all skill levels.
There's not much SOTA activity in Eastern Ontario due to a lack of suitable summits, but we do have a cornacopua of POTA parks which are great places to operate from.
Both CW and SSB is used in this event. CW speeds are usually in the 13-20 wpm range.
It takes place Saturday, April 21, 0800 to 1800 EDT, and the event uses the standard QRP frequencies.
From what I can find this event, and the NJQRP Skeeter Hunt in August, are the only two that have an SSB category.
More information and the rules can be found HERE.
Stay safe out there !!
Originally I had the FT2Dr handheld, but recently it was traded for another mobile rig. That was a mistake, for some reason I forgot that I like to take a HT along with me when I'm off to do a POTA activation. We have a large contingent of POTA activators here in Kingston, and it's a good way to keep in touch with them on the local C4FM repeater, and keep track of where they all are. That way two or three operators don't show up independently to the same park to attempt an activation.
This is a great HT. The RX and TX audio is probably the best I have heard from a small radio before, and so far I have had many compliments on the audio quality. I have changed out the stock antenna for a Diamond SRH77CA dual band antenna, but to be very honest I don't hear much of a difference between it and the stock antenna.
Is there a downside? Yes, it takes a full nine hours to charge the battery. I did purchase extra the AA battery pack for the radio. I figured I could use that to finish a QSO, or continue to monitor while the main battery charges.
I haven't really started exploring the capabilities of this radio yet, but I very much like what I have seen so far. Would I recommend it? Yes, with no reservations.
Stay safe out there !!
Sometime last year Cataraqui Cemetery National Historic Site was added to the POTA list as VE-5300. To be honest, at the time most of the hams in town thought it was kind of disrespectful to do that, myself included.
But then you hear the stories from the old guys about how many hams are actually buried there, so I decided to bite the bullet and activate it.
Let me tell you, it's a very spooky spot at night. Yep, I did a late shift activation starting at 0001 UTC....but I won't do that again. In fact I don't think I will ever activate there again, once was enough, thank you very much.
It took me 21 minutes to put 25 contacts in the log. 40m was just hopping, yet the QSB was bad and the propagation numbers weren't the best: SFI-96, SN-24, A Index-12, and the K Index-3. It was interesting that in the cemetery I had a constant S9 noise floor, so I know many stations who couldn't make it through the noise floor were missed. The contacts made were all solid S9 plus.
I must admit I was very uncomfortable there, it's not really the place to play ham radio, so I closed down with the 25 contacts and went home.
Here's last night's 40m contact map:
Stay safe out there!!
To qualify a Hill for this award, must have a 100m prominence, meaning it sticks up above the surrounding land by at least 100m.
So far there are 196 Hills in Ontario that qualify for this award. Most are fairly hard to access, but there are some that are fairly easy to activate.
On Saturday I found a local hill, spotted myself on 20m, and called CQ. Well, to say it was a waste of time was perhaps an understatement!! The bands were in very poor shape. I guess I should have paid more attention to the propagation numbers before I left home......I probably would have stayed in bed.
The numbers were: SFI=147, SN=109, A Index=22, and the K Index=4. Yeah, I wasn't going to talk anywhere that morning.
I had set up some Scheds with a couple of UK stations, in order to do Hill to Hill contacts, but that was not to be.
Have a look at the HEMA Award Scheme HERE. If you're interested in getting HEMA up and running in your State of Province, get hold of Rob at: newDXCC at hema.org.uk
Plans are already underway for the next HEMA Day, to be held on October 22nd, 2022.
Stay safe out there!
Moderate (G2) to strong (G3) geomagnetic storms will be in the forecast beginning on Wednesday. A pair of coronal mass ejections that were observed on Monday are predicted to combine into one larger shock front and impact Earths geomagnetic field.
The forecast calls for a passage by late in the day Wednesday (UTC time) and into early Thursday. The forecast doesn't look too good!
Here you go:
Carlos Nora CT1END, Emergency Communications Co-Ordinator for Portugal reports that a group of nine Radio Amateurs in the towns of Velas and Calheta are working to support emergency communications locally through VHF/UHF repeaters but also long range links back to Portugal on:
80M – 3,750.00 MHz. — 3,760.00 MHz. – LSB (Overnight)
40M – 7,100.00 MHz. — 7,110.00 MHz. – LSB (During the day)
20M – 14,300.00 MHz. USB (For outside region)
This external activity being supported by the Azores DX group and the Portuguese national society REP.
Other radio amateurs are encouraged to listen carefully and avoid causing any QRM to emergency operations on the above frequencies.
It was still fairly cold when I left to do a POTA activation this morning at VE-5141, Lemoine Point, but not enough to be uncomfortable.
Because of the CQ WPX Contest on this weekend I chose to avoid 20m and 40m. Contest traffic on those bands was crammed into every inch of those bands. I decided to get on 17m and avoid the congestion. However, as soon as I starting calling CQ, the deliberate QRMing started. Apparently the Children don't like POTA on 17m, that's too bad, I kept going anyway.
Propagation today was: SFI=112, SN=50, A Index=10, and K Index=1.
There was some very deep QSB and lots of noise on 17m, which made things quite difficult, along with the deliberate QRMing, to actually complete a contact. But after a pretty slow thirty minutes I had 14 contacts in the log, including 2 into Spain, and so I went QRT.
I have to say that I was actually quite proud of the fact that my puny 10w into a 17m hamstick had so many of the regulars on 17m in a complete meltdown. Some people just don't like to share their space I guess. They insist POTA is a contest.....which it isn't.
By tomorrow morning the madness of the contest should have settled down, so I'm planning on another portable operating, this time on 10m and 15m, and see what DX I can work.
Here's todays QSO Map:
What a great day to be out playing portable radio today!! It's a balmy +11C here, best day all year...so far. It's warming up fast here, in fact in less than a week the ice has all but disappeared from Lake Ontario.
This mornings propagation was "interesting". The numbers were: SFI=95, SN=39, A Index=9, and the K Index=1. There was a great deal of very deep fading, and a fair bit of QRM going on.
The best contacts of the day were to Jean-Luc, F4GWG, and Jean, F4ILH, both located on the French mid-Atlantic Coast. Not too shabby for 10w into a 20m Hamstick 😀
The bands are definitely getting better, but they are sure taking their sweet time!
Here's todays QSO Map:
Stay Safe Out There...
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The bands were full of contesters all screaming "CQ Contest", so it was off to 17m where the more saner operators had decided to hang out.
First up this morning was Bob, M0MJA, who gave me a nice signal report of '54'....not too bad for 10w into a 17m hamstick on my vans roof....and that was my last DX of the day. I managed 7 contacts on 17m and then moved to 40m, which while busy, was still a comparatively sane place at that time of day.
Weather wise it was actually comfortable today, the temperature was hovering around 0C, but there was no wind at all. Hopefully we'll start to get more days like that now that March is here.
Here's todays QSO Map:
Stay safe out there!
Slava Ukraini !!
Rules can be found HERE.
One rule that I don't understand is the fact that we are not allowed to run multi-operator QRP stations. The rule makes no sense at all to me, I guess I will have to contact the ARRL and ask why this rule is there.
I noticed that propagation went into the toilet this morning, hopefully it will improve before next Saturday!
Take care out there, and stay safe !!
February around here is normally a very quiet month, and this year seems to be no different. Of course I'm talking about amateur radio here....not trucker convoys causing mayhem across the country.
I was out a few days ago, using my KX3 and my 20m EFHW. To be honest, I didn't notice any difference between using the EFHW with a 20m Hamstick, the end result seemed to be exactly the same. In fact if you overlay todays map with a map from last week, or even last month...they look pretty much the same.
Temperature wise it's actually warmed up to a balmy -3C here, although I'm sure we are going to get hit with another round, or two, of snow before the end of March. It was quite comfortable doing my last POTA activation, I really didn't feel too cold at all. The older you get the harder it seems you handle the cold.
This year, I am planning on taking part in the ARRL International SSB DX Contest. This is being held on the weekend of March 5th & 6th. I will do this contest QRO with my FT-950, as I think it will be a waste of time running QRP. The Rules for this contest can be found HERE.
Stay warm and safe out there !!
We've had some terrible weather here over the last week. Another foot and a half (39 cm) of snow is on the ground and some freezing rain was added to it. Luckily both my antenna have survived the wind and ice, but not much operating was done.
So today started with this strange golden yellow ball hanging in a beautiful deep blue sky, something we haven't seen for a few weeks now.....time to get out and play radio!!
It was still very cold, -20C in the wind, and the wind was gusting to 35 kph, so it had quite the bite to it. I chose to go to Lemoine's Point, VE-5141, which is fairly close to my QTH. With the bad propagation we have suffered through this past week I wasn't sure how the bands would be.
Propagation this morning was:
SFI=130, SN=87, A Index=32, and the K Index=3.....so it was going to be interesting. Lot's of very deep QSB rounded things off.
Once again I stuck with 20m using the Hamstick, KX3 and 10w. Really, I didn't think I was going to have much luck today operating....but it was nice just to get out of the house with a radio!
What an activation I had! I put EA1FIC, Spain, and CU3HY, the Azores, in the log along with 26 US states and 2 Canadian provinces. It turned out to be a great day. The QSB was pretty deep at times, and I must apologize for the couple that I just could not work because of it.
Here's todays QSO map:
