What I remember

Dad with N0.19 Radio Set

With Remembrance Day just around the corner I thought it important to mark this occasion with a non-ham radio blog entry.

My Dad was a very special guy to me, and I can’t, even now, begin to describe how I felt on the 23rd May, 1993, when he passed away. Not a day has gone by since then when I have not taken a moment each day to think about him.

He enlisted in 1942, at the age of 16, in the Royal Air Force Regiment, and after his basic training and then trade training as a signaller, he was posted to 2816 Squadron, RAF Regiment where he spent the entire war training and then fighting through North West Europe with them. Dad saw action at the D-Day Landings, Rouen, St Pol, Moerkerke, the Leopold Canal (December 1944), Damme, Grimbergenand and Woerndrecht/Deurne, where the Squadron was based during Operation 'Bodenplatte' (the Luftwaffe attack on Allied airfields on 1 January 1945). Further moves east took it to Antwerp, Ahlhorn, Hustedt and Celle, where it disbanded in June 1946. After the Squadron was disbanded he was posted to 2742 Squadron at RAF Station Ramat David in Palestine, from where he was eventually discharged in 1948. 

As far back as I can remember he regaled us all with stories about his war experiences. I suppose looking back on it now it was his way of getting therapy from some of the stuff he witnessed while overseas.

Every two years my Dad faithfully returned to the UK to attend 2816 Squadron's reunion, always held in a large pub in Glasshouse Street in London, and always well attended by its Veterans. Those of you with a military background will appreciate the humour of holding a military reunion in "Glasshouse" street! He always came home with new stories, as somebody always jogged his memory about a long forgotten event.

My Dad was not a special person, just one of a couple of million who felt it was their duty to step forward, and do something for their country at a time of great need.  Duty, was a powerful word in those days, and todays generation would do well to remember that citizenship, is not a free ride.

Of course there has to be a ham radio connection to this story....after my family immigrated to Canada in 1966 my dad became a ham, a natural thing for him to do considering his war time service as a signaller. He loved operating CW, and many an evening I remember sitting with him at the kitchen table, his SB-101 blaring 50 wpm CW at us, and him sitting there reading his library book, drinking tea, and copying the CW…all at the same time.

He was licensed in 1970 as VE7CVQ, a callsign that I now very proudly hold in his memory. That callsign only gets used three times a year these days, his birthday, the day we lost him, and Remembrance Day.

Lest we forget.



In Memory of the Officers and Men
of 2816 Squadron, RAF Regiment, 1942 - 1946
Lest We Forget

Buddies in the Caribbean

The “Buddies in the Caribbean” DXpedition group, specializing in 100 watt or less low power radios and the Buddipole portable antenna systems, will be in St Lucia (J6) on 5-13 December, 2010.

There will be 3 villa stations in operation plus daily battery-only QRP portable operations operating on 160m thru 6m, propagation permitting.

QSL via the J6/homecall of the operator (SASE), eQSL, or LOTW. For current announcements, see our website at http://sites.google.com/site/caribbeanbuddies or our daily blogsite at http://caribbeanbuddies.blogspot.com/. The website has an on-line chat feature for realtime dialog with the dxpedition team.

It's amazing how good the Buddipole system actually is.  I'm really looking forward to working Budd W7FF, and the rest of the guys, on this Dxpedition. Hopefully from somewhere were I, too, can use my Buddipole!

RAC Bulletin 2010-019E

I have just read the bulletin issued by the RAC President, Geoff Bawden VE4BAW, from the IARU Region 2 conference in El Salvador.

Amongst the pearls of wisdom Geoff wrote about was this one: "Canadians will also be interested in HF band planning in 40m (now that short wave commercial stations have left the band)......"

Er.....excuse me Mr. President...have you actually been up on 40m lately? I hate to tell you this Geoff, but 40m above 7.200 is full of Chinese, North Korean, and Spanish commercial shortwave stations operating there on a nightly basis! There is also a Chinese station that broadcasts nightly in the middle of the old CW novice portion of 40m making that part of the band almost unusable as well. These stations have not “left the band” as you put it; they have simply moved up the band a few Kcs and have continued on as before!

Looks like somebody didn’t do their homework…..or has been spending far too much time on 2m!

JOTA 2010

Friday afternoon saw Dave-VE3DZE, George-VE3SIQ, and myself head north on Hwy 15 to the Whispering Pines Scout Camp, on Otty Lake, to set up their Jamboree on the Air stations.
It was pouring rain with winds 30 kph gusting to 60 kph when we arrived, and that situation didn't change until well after midnight.  It was, as they write...."A dark and stormy night..."

This was the first time we had done the JOTA from the Whispering Pines Scout Camp, so it was all new terrain for us.  The camp is a beautiful spot, all wilderness, and no buildings allowed there at all.  In fact once you are there you would not guess for a moment that you are actually only 6 Km south of the Town of Perth.  The camp has many large trees....all waiting to be strung with dipole antennas, and it is also very well looked after by their Camp Warden - Stan.

The JOTA Campsite

Friday evening saw us simply set up our camp and the screen tents we were to operate from.  It's a good job we brought as many large tarps as we did, because we used them all to keep everything dry.

After we finished setting up we drove into Perth and had supper at Michael's restaurant.  The food there was excellent.  It was also a great opportunity for us to take our time and dry out.

We used wire dipoles for 80m and 20m, and the Buddipole for 40m and 6m dipole.  All the antennas worked exceptionally well, and even though they were not that high off the ground, we did get a fair bit of DX from them.

Saturday morning came and the rain had given way to a beautiful blue sky, and the winds dropped to nothing around noon.  One of the Scout leaders lent us his 5000Kw generator, which was a stroke of good luck as I doubt our batteries would have lasted as long as we ended up needing them.

Dave-VE3DZE hard at work

Dave-VE3DZE and I shared one screen tent to operate from.  It wasn't that bad as we used our field day coax notch filter set, and that took out any interference we would have had being so close.  Dave made some good contacts on 20m during the day, but while we had hoped to work some European stations doing JOTA, we never heard any at all, and none responded to our CQ's.

For most of the day we stayed put on 7.169 and worked N2Y, who was working the JOTA from a scout camp near Constantia, NY.  It was interesting to listen to the American scouts describe their scouting system to our Canadian scouts.  Of course it was the fact that Canada has Coed scout troops, with real live girls, these days that really peaked the American scout's attention!

George VE3SIQ.....surrounded

George-VE3SIQ worked the 80m band for most of the day.  There were only a few signals on 80m, so a few of the net controllers for the ONTARS net on 3.755 helped us out by talking to the scouts. Thanks for doing that guys, you really brought big smiles to the faces of dozens of kids!

I managed to work a good number of stations on 40m, but it wasn't until late in the afternoon that I discovered that the power had been turned down to 10w all day!  Of course, before I discovered that I was operating QRP, I worked DR1A and DR1L, both in Germany.  Not too bad for QRP into a Buddipole dipole at 18 feet off the ground.

JOTA is an excellent method of introducing young people to our hobby.  We had several of the scouts hang around the radios all day.  In fact one young lad, Alex, was so interested in ham radio I sat him down and allowed him to work a few contest stations, under his own steam (and my supervision), during the NY QSO Party that was also going on that day.  The kid is a natural!  Larry Palmer-VE3LFP, who is a scout leader in that area is going to try and find the young fella a local Elmer so he can continue with the hobby.

JOTA and ARES are a natural fit.  It provides a good scenario that allows ARES to deploy to the field and set up and operate under realistic conditions.  It also gives excellent exposure of our great hobby to the youth of this country, which we all know we sorely need given the age of most of us "Olde Farts". 

So, given this natural fit of JOTA and ARES, one must ask why the RAC Field Service decided to hold the Canadian National ARES SET on the same weekend?  And while we're on this subject, why was there not a RAC Bulletin issued to advise hams of the fact that JOTA was taking place.  At least then we could have possibly had more hams on the air for the youth to talk to.

Once again, RAC proves to us all that they are not paying attention on how to attract younger hams....or do they really care about attracting youth members?  JOTA happens every year guys....on the same weekend in October....and has done for 53 years. 

The hams from Kingston provided operators for two JOTA scout camps, for about 300 youth combined between the two, and Bill-VE3CRU, operating from Mossport Raceway, had 300 scouts at that location go through his portable shack alone last weekend! 

How many more youth across the country could have had good exposure to the hobby if our ARES groups were not tied up with an ineffectual exercise?  RAC wasted a wonderful opportunity last weekend to showcase our ham radio hobby to the youth of this country.  ARES exercises can be held any weekend of the year, but there's only one JOTA per year. 

So please RAC executive and directors, don't cry to us about the lack of youth in our hobby.  We're trying our best to get them interested, but once again you greatly let us down!

High altitude balloon flight to carry 6 meter beacon

The launch of ARBONET-4 will take place on Saturday October 9th, 2010 from the Paris, Texas Hamfest.

The ARBONET-4 launch is planned for 9:00 AM from the parking area of the fairgrounds.

ARBONET-4, the fourth in the ARBONET series of High Altitude Balloon flights, will be a demonstration and training flight utilizing beacons on three different amateur bands: 6 meters, 2 meters and 70 centimeters.

The ARBONET-4 payloads are:
Voice Beacon: K5ARB – 435.025 MHz (FM)
CW Homing Beacon (5 WPM): K5ARB - 147.475 MHz
APRS: K5ARB-11 - 144.390 MHz
Hellschreiber / CW Beacon: W5BL - 50.500 MHz

Give a listen and see if you can hear the balloon!

Parrotts Bay Portable Ops

Sunday morning was pretty gloomy with clouds and rain in the forecast, but it wasn't that cold.  Eight of us met at the Parrotts Bay Picnic area on Hwy 33, just west of Amherstview, and set up our rigs and operated portable HF for 3.5 hours.

The Parrotts Bay picnic site is a very nice spot to operate. It's clean, has portable washrooms, and lots of space for parking. The bay is filling up with ducks as they get ready to move south for the winter, and while the water must be cooling down by now, there were some kayakers out on the bay taking in the start of the fall colours.

Don, VE3MNE, and I tried 20m at first, but it was full of RTTY traffic taking part in the CQ RTTY Worldwide Contest.  They were all over the band, so we quickly moved up to 40m were things were a little slower.

The Texas QSO Party was also on, but all our attempts to make contact with stations in Texas fell on deaf ears.  I guess our 50 watts just was not making it down there to that part of North America. 

Martin VA3AKY, Carl VE3DNR, and Dave VA3ORP worked on getting Martin's 20m dipole working.  It had been cut incorrectly and needed a major operation to get it tuned up and on the air.

Dave, who's into the No. 19 Radio Sets, got out his slide rule to figure the measurements out.....I haven't seen one of those things in....dare I say it....40 years!  Anyway, it did the job and Martin was soon up and running, making contacts.

Dave made a few 80m contacts with his "Blue Pill" vertical antenna, including checking into Ontars with a stunning 5 watts on his FT-817.  QRP Rules! 

Bill, VA3WOW, our DEC for Loyalist ARES District also drove from Belleville to join us for the morning.  He also helped in the antenna reconstruction, and we had a good chat about "all things ARES".

As I normally use my Buddipole in the vertical mode, I recently bought three extra kite winders from Buddipole in California to use for my radials.  That brings my "collection" of them to five, so I've decided that I am going to cut some radials - 2 per band - and have a single kite winder for each length ready to go in my go-box.  I think this will cut down on the messing around measuring out the radials using my current system.....we'll see how it goes anyway.

All in all, it was a very pleasant fall day to be outside in the fresh air playing radio.

2m Commercial Activity

I hope that most of you who read this Blog now know of that Industry Canada authorized commercial interests the use of a 2m simplex frequency over the September 10-12 weekend.  This was for an international cycling event being held in both Quebec City and Montreal.

The bulletin issued by RAC is below:

RAC Bulletin 2010-09-14E

2010-09-10


Industry Canada advised both RAC and RAQI on Friday, Sept 10, 2010 that their Montreal office had authorized a number of 430 to 450 MHz frequencies and a single VHF frequency on 145.555 mHz. According to IC, frequencies were chosen to avoid known amateur repeater channels. These frequencies in the 70 cm and 2m amateur bands were temporarily authorized to support communications for many European entrants of a cycling event to be held on Quebec City and Montreal on Sept 10 and Sept 12 respectively. This type of authorized intrusion by Industry Canada of non-amateur communications in amateur spectrum is highly unusual and is a matter of great concern to Radio Amateurs of Canada. RAC will be taking the matter up with Industry Canada officials. RAC will be interested in knowing if actual interference has been caused to amateur communications; please report any observations to regulatory@rac.ca

Norm Rashleigh, VE3LC
Vice President, Industrial Liaison

Industry Canada authorized this commercial activity on 2m in direct violation of Canada's international agreements.   
 
What has RAC done about this?  So far the silence from them has been deafening!  Canadian hams have a right to know what is being done to ensure this type of activity never happens again!  If RAC has not filed a complaint then Industry Canada will take it for granted that they can do this again and again.
 
Tonight I sent an email to Norm Rashleigh, the RAC VP for Industrial Liaison, asking him what action RAC had taken.  That email is below:
 
Norm,

Has RAC filed a formal complaint with the ITU over Industry Canada allowing commercial activity on the 2m band?

Has RAC formally asked IC why they permitted this intrusion, in violation of our international agreements? I would like to remind you that this intrusion, so very close to the border, will also have affected our American ham friends. It will be interesting to see what response comes from the ARRL.

I most sincerely hope that RAC has done something over this issue!!
 
For those of you who wish to ask Norm questions on this intrusion, he can be reached at VE3LC@rac.ca
 
I'll post any response I receive from Norm, here on the blog.

UPDATE   As of September 28th there has been no response to my email to Norm Rashleigh, the RAC VP for Industrial Liaison, regarding RAC's response to this commercial intrusion on our 2m band.  

This lack of response to inquiries, and lack of transparency in its operating is quickly becoming the trademark of RAC.

UPDATE   As of September 30th.  Bob-VE3MPG and Peter-VE3HG have both updated their Blogs on this subject.  Bob has received material from Industry Canada and has posted it.  Their blogs can be found at:

http://ve3mpg.blogspot.com/  Bob – VE3MPG

http://ve3hg.wordpress.com/  Peter – VE3HG

I recommend that all hams read these blogs.  They are very interesting reading.

Chilicon

Man, what a weekend!!  The Ottawa Valley QRP Club held their annual Chilicon over the weekend of 17-19 September at Rideau River Provincial Park, and a good time was had by all that attended.  It was also QRP Afield weekend as well.

Rideau River Provincial Park is a very clean park, and the camping sites are very well kept.  There was a good number of people in the campground but it wasn't full, nor was it noisy.

Only four of us camped there for the weekend, Mike VE3WMB, Martin VA3SIE, Jim VE3XJ and myself.  It would have been nice to have more camp with us, but we did have a good number of visitors come out on Saturday to do some operating with us.

This was the first time I had camped using the new truck.  It was pretty comfortable, and I'm sure if it had rained I would have stayed dry.  As I had not been camping for a year or two, it was an interesting time trying to find all my gear.

The bands were in good condition, and I made several good DX contacts on 20m SSB running only 10 watts. First up was Gerry F6IGS in Bordeaux, France. Then it was Al YV2BYT in South-West Venezuala, and finally Nikola 9A9AA in Zagreb, Croatia. As usual I used my FT-857D and a vertical Buddipole. I also had QSO's with a dozen or so amateurs across North America. The campsite was a great place to operate from.

It was a real pleasure to meet, and talk, to the guys from Ottawa, especially the two Bob's, VE3MPG and VA3RCS.  I really learned a lot from them all. Mike VE3WMB decided to take part in the Feldhellschreiber Sprint on Saturday lunch time.  This was the first time I had seen that mode in action, and many thanks to Mike for taking the time to explain it all to me.

Hopefully Chilicon will become an annual affair for the QRPer's in Eastern Ontario, I'm already planning to be there in 2011!