The Bike Tour......

What a great weekend we had for the 2013 Rideau Lakes Cycle Tour.  Saturday was cool and cloudy with a little bit of rain late in the day, and Sunday was a glorious sunny day.

Don, VE3MNE, and myself operated two VHF stations from the parking lot of the Perth Road Village General Store.  We arrived on site at 1000 Local, and setup our equipment.  One station acted as Net Control for the Frontenac Section of the tour, and the other is a liaison station with Net Control for the Perth Section located in Westport.

We had issues both days getting into the Christie Lake repeater, VA3TEL.  Normally we can hit it from anywhere in Perth Road Village with a 5/8 mag-mount, but not this weekend.  In the end a 22' mast with a 2m antenna lashed to the top did the job, and even then conditions deteriorated over the course of the day to the point we had to shut down the liaison radio.

On Saturday the first rider came through Perth Road Village at 1123 local, and after that it was a steady stream of riders and support vehicles until we closed things down at 1700 local.  This is an hour and a half earlier than any of the past 7 years we have provided communications support to the tour.

Thanks to Tim, VA3TIC, for paying us a visit and delivering Timmies coffee to us.

We dealt with two accidents on Saturday, both minor. Thanks to the drivers of the support vans things were looked after very quickly.

Sunday started real early at my house.....0400 Local !!  After loading a freshly charged battery into the back of my truck, it was off to pick up Roy, VE3VJF, and then a slow drive back up to the village.  It was a slow drive due to heavy ground fog and lots of deer on the road.

Roy VE3VJF in control
 

After setting up the antennas and radios it was just a matter of sitting around and waiting for the riders to come by heading home to Perth and Ottawa. 

The first rider left Queen's University at 0500 Local, and came screaming by us, without stopping, at 0626 Local.  Many of the riders did not stop at the General Store on the way home this year, those that did enjoyed some cold water, clean toilets, and lots of grass to lay about on in the warm sun.

It was 1100 Local when the last rider left the village and we closed down the net.  We passed Net Control off to Westport and the boys of the Lanark-North Leeds ARES Group.

As usual this was a great weekend and lots of fun to do.  It's really great practice for ARES and Emcomm groups, it allows us to deploy to locations we don't normally operate from, and it gets us to pass real message traffic that actually means something, not just the usual fake exercise traffic. 

After it was all over it was off back down Hwy 10 to the Star Diner in Kingston for a very late breakfast, and around the table the planning for next years operation was begun.

A huge THANK-YOU goes out to the owners, and extended family, of the Perth Road Village General Store for their great support of the Bike Tour.  We look forward every year to see their smiling faces, and the communications team appreciates very much what they do for us over the weekend...........and they have the best coffee !!!!!!

The working space
 

It's all over for this year!!




 

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!

CQ WPX

Another great contest is now over, perhaps not under the finest of band conditions, but it was a blast.  The 'K' and 'A' index were both through the roof on Friday evening, and really didn't get better until just as the contest was over on Sunday evening.

I managed to put a couple of new ones in the log, HP1/IZ6BRN in Panama was first up, followed by H27A in Cyprus.  Lots of contest regulars on the bands, and it was nice to hear many "Happy Easters" as signal reports and serial numbers were handed out.

Once again I'm very happy to report the absense of LIDS and Band Cops.  I didn't hear a single act of bad behaviour on the bands this weekend, everyone was in such  good spirits......spring must have sprung!

Main workhorses this weekend were 10m and 15m, and considering the SFI numbers that was a huge surprise.

Next major contest for me will be the Ontario QSO Party on 20/21 April, but I haven't decided where I'm going to do it from.

Ground Waves

Interesting morning today, it was the first Emcomm deployment practice and exercise of 2013 for Frontenac Emcomm Group, and it was almost perfect weather for it. 

Homebrewed 80m Coil on 31' vertical

We set up four HF stations, all about 20 to 30 Kms from Net Control, and each other.  The object was to establish contact on 80m and successfully pass traffic using HF ground wave.   We also checked the 2m repeater coverage between us and tried to establish contact using 146.520 simplex. 

I drove to Piccadilly, just north of Verona on Hwy 38 and setup in the parking lot of the North Frontenac Rec Centre.  A busy hockey "hot spot" this morning.  Larissa VE3KGC and myself got more than our fair share of funny  looks from the crowd as we got ready and laid out the cables and wires.

The HF antenna system used today was the homebrewed 31' vertical on a collapsible MFJ mast with four 16' radials and a 4:1 Balun.  Also used today, for the first time, was the 80m homebrewed coil.   The coil is made from 15 turns of No. 10 wire wound around a 3" PVC coupler.  The coil must be removed to work any other band. 

FT-857D in action

I was really pleased and surprised at just how well this worked.  I at least anticipated some issues and had my toolbox standing by...but it wasn't needed.  The antenna tuned up perfectly using the LDG tuner on the FT-857D with no issues at all.

I'm sure there are some good losses using the coil, but for Emcomm work and passing traffic around Frontenac County it works just great. 

The repeater check went well, but the simplex check....not so good.  We could hear Net Control but the others were really too weak to work.  It might be interesting to try this on 2m SSB in the future. 

The topography of Frontenac County is that of rolling hills and valleys.  You're OK if you're on top of the hill, but the valleys are terrible for getting a signal out....which is why we practice HF ground wave comms. 

It was nice to get out and let the winter cobwebs get blown away this morning.......I now feel that spring must really be just around the corner.  A lot was accomlished and a lot of "lessons learned" filed away for future use. 

The next two monthly exercises will see us checking out the new digital network we are in the process of building up in the County.   So far we have two Nodes - VE3KER-7 in South Kingston and VE3FPN-7 in Sydenham, and a WinLink Gateway on VE3FRG-10 in North Kingston.  Future plans call for at least another two Nodes in the North part of the County.