2m Challenge

Had a great day today on Fort Henry Hill....believe it or not.  The new information centre is closed and because of that the 30 or so plasma screens are shut off and the local noise level is back down to zero.

Today was the Frontenac Club's 2m Challenge.  A simple contest 1 point per contact using both SSB and FM.

We could have done with a few more stations on the air, but those who did take part had a good time.

I decided at the very last minute to head up to Fort Henry and I didn't take that much gear with me.  It was a shake the winter cobwebs off type of day.  It was still cold, -12C under a brilliant blue sky and about a 25 kph wind.  Lots of kite flyers up on the hill today.  My feet froze in my winter boots for some reason, but any excuse to turn on the engine and pump some heat into the truck cab.

Anyway, rig of the day was the FT-857D, and the antenna, which is shown below, was a very simple 2m dipole made from Buddipole parts on a 18' painter pole........and it worked very well.  This was the first time the 857 has been out of the box since last October's County Emergency Exercise if I remember correctly.  It doesn't get used very much, and as a result everytime I do use it, it becomes a learning experience all over again, and of course it hardly ever gets used for VHF use. 

Got to work several 2m QRP stations today, which is always nice to see, and had the winter cobwebs blown off.  Hopefully spring is just around the corner and more portable ops will be on the table.

A very dirty VE3CLQ mobile station

10m action

What an amazing day on 10m!   The band has been wide open into Europe and the Middle East just about all day, and the stations have been wall to wall.   As well as 10m, 12m and 17m have been very active as well today, with lots of great DX showing up.

I was very pleased at 1555Z to have Dattatry, VU2DSI, from Ahmednagar, in Central India pick me up, and on my first call to him.  Made my day!

I cannot remember ever actually hearing an Indian station on the air.  I've seen lots of them posted on the DX Cluster, but to work them on the very first call is just amazing.

The past few months have been fantastic on 10m, I remember my Dad, the "original" VE7CVQ, working the world on 10m back in 1992/1993.  Let's hope these conditions last until months end and the next big contest!

The Weekend Round-Up

What a great weekend on the bands! The ARRL International SSB Contest certainly brought hams out of the woodwork and on the air.

When I looked at the SFI numbers on Thursday to see what was going on, I thought we would all be twiddling our thumbs on Saturday and Sunday, but instead it turned around and the conditions where pretty good after all.

40m didn’t make me smile very much; I only managed to make a total of four contacts on that band all weekend long. I was hearing lots of stations, the problem was nobody was calling “CQ Contest”, and nobody was answering my CQ calls either. Both 20m and 15m sort of got left behind in the rush that was 10m. I made 31 contacts on 20m, 30 contacts on 15m, and 261 contacts on 10m.

Furthest contact of the weekend was with JA2AXB in Shizuoko City, Japan on 10m.

The Band Police must have taken the weekend off as I didn’t hear any of them about all weekend. However, there is one gentleman, and I really do use that term loosely, who spent a couple of hours Saturday afternoon jamming contesters on 14.235. Apparently it was his personal frequency and he objected most strongly to anyone who got close. His foul mouth and racist rants had to be heard to be believed. I hope somebody caught his callsign and managed to tape him so the FCC can also hear him. He certainly doesn’t deserve to be a ham with his attitude.

Let’s all hope the last weekend of the month is just as good for the CQ WW WPX SSB Contest.

ARRL International SSB DX Contest

Coming up in two weeks is the ARRL International SSB DX Contest.  Contest runs from 0000Z, March 1st  to 2400Z, March 2nd.

Looking forward to getting back on the air, both HF antennas seem to have survived the long winter we have had this year, and are both working well. 

Looking at my logbook entries for last years contest it seemed that the European stations were in the majority on the Saturday, and the South Americans and Caribbean stations were the majority on Sunday, We’ll see if it’s the same this year.



 

Trying another way to publish in this blog

 

This is a test posting using Windows Live Writer

AND……..obviously we have a winner   So we will continue to use this blog now that we have the picture posting issue fixed.

Posting Issues

Has anyone else had trouble trying to upload pictures to their Blogs on Blogger?  For some reason I can no longer do this. 


I can post text....obviously, but no pictures at all, no matter what format I try them in.


HELP !! :-)

Kidney Stones...

No operating in the NA QSO Party today for me.  I'm out for the count with a bout of kidney stones.  I thought I might be able to handle it, but the pain is pretty bad and sitting around just makes it worse.  Good luck to all who take part!

Hopefully this will be over in a few days......until then we just keep trying to smile!

2014 Plans.......

Trees to hang antennas - Check!
Salt water - Check!

Well another year has come and we're off for another rollicking 12 months of ham radio fun....but what fun to have?

Like most of you reading this the expense of doing a major DXpedition is really out of the question, but with so much money tied up in equipment you have to do something or SWMBO might get upset!   So what to do?

I've decided that first up will be the activation of three local islands, two of which I have not activated before, ON-175 Block House Island in Brockville, and ON-177 Treasure Island in Gananoque.  I'll also finally attempt a first time activation of Upper Brewers Mill Island, just south of Seeley's Bay.

I'm also going to activate a couple of lighthouses.  The first one will be CAN-815 Portsmouth Harbour Light, which has not been activated within living memory from what the local hams tell me, and then off to CAN-767 Prescott to activate the harbour light there.

These are what I'm going to call "micro-dxpeditions"

Of course sitting here watching the winds blow the loose snow across my backyard as Kingston suffers in a bone chilling -37C with the wind chill, a major DXpedition to Fiji looks pretty good right about now......and damn the expense!