Simcoe Island or ON-022

Sunday was an outstanding day to activate one of the local islands.  We had a beautiful blue sky all day and a temperature that eventually reached 18C.  The down side was the fact that the May Flies are out in force, getting into everything.....it's a good job they don't bite!!

It takes two ferry rides from Kingston to reach Simcoe Island, a large ferry that carries about 40 cars and another much smaller one that carries two or three, depending on their size.  So after the clubs weekly Sunday breakfast, Dave, VE3DZE and myself took ourselves off to the ferry dock to start the journey to Simcoe Island.

There's not much on Simcoe Island, a couple of working cattle farms and about 30 cottages or so.  The biggest thing on the island is Nine Mile Lighthouse, CAN-578, which we activate at least once a year, and especially for the ILLW each August.

Buddipole set up as a 15m Dipole

My radio for the day was the IC-703 QRP radio, with a Buddipole Antenna.  Dave's radio was an FT-450 with the 31' "Chillycon Special" with 6 radials.

We heard many European stations, nearly all of them 10 to 20 over S9, but they certainly didn't hear Dave or myself. The good propagation seemed to be reaching everyone but us!  There was some very deep QSB on the bands, and that certainly didn't help us at all.

Dave did manage to pull 6 contacts out of his FT-450, all of them in either the US or Canada.   It was very frustrating to hear the VE7's working S9 into Europe and nobody hearing us at all.  Oh well, any day playing radio......is better than a day at work.

Regardless of the fact that we didn't work any DX, it was still a great day out. 

Update......

Well seeing how its been over a month since I updated my blog I thought I should get my act together and get on with it!!

It's been an interesting month to say the least.  The big news is that I will be made redundant from my job at the end of June.  This news has "sort of" taken the wind out of my sails, but we will survive and move on with things.

I must thank Tim, VA3TIC who came over and re-strung one leg of my 80m OCF Dipole that had slipped way down in the high winds we have recently had.  Tim managed to shoot a line about another 20' higher in the tree, so we're back up on that leg at 45'.

There has not been too much amateur radio work done around here for a few weeks, to be honest I have had other things on my mind, and radio has taken a back seat. But, having given myself a kick in the ass, plans are already under way for a few activities.

In fact the first activity will be tomorrow with the activation of Simcoe Island, ON-022.  The plan is to be on the air from 1400 UTC till 1800 UTC on the usual island activation frequencies...shown below:

7.250, 14.250 - 14.260, 21.350, 28.450, 50.125, and 144.200.  The club call sign, VE3FRG will be used.

And.......in other news it was very nice to be told that with my entry of 12, 096 total points in the 2013 ARRL November Sweepstakes, I have been awarded Top in Canada in the QRP category.  Thanks to all those stations who took the time and the effort to dig my small signal out of the mud!!

See you on the bands!

RMS and Packet Radio

Over the past 14 months the Frontenac Radio Group has been busy building up an RMS Packet system for use by the Frontenac County Emcomm Team.  This system now comprises of four Nodes and two Gateways.   This will now allow us to move digital traffic all over the county.

As well as our digital system, the hams in Westport and Perth who belong to Leeds - North Grenville ARES have also built up a smaller system that ties into the Frontenac system.  They have one Node and two gateways up right now and another couple in the works.

In the past 3 months the hams from the Prince Edward County ARES have also jumped aboard and now have one Node and one Gateway built and operational.  This allows us to move Peer-to-Peer traffic from Belleville to East of Perth.

Red Dots are for the Frontenac system.  Orange for Leeds-North Grenville, and Blue for Prince Edward County.

To get started with RMS Express, a good website is HERE.   These systems are accessable via 145.070.

What's Up....??

Saturday started out just beautiful here in Kingston, blue skies and a temperature of about +12C......almost heaven after the weather of the past 5 months!

In fact it was so nice, I decided that after coffee I would take a detour on the way home and look for some new operating locations for use later in the spring and summer.  I managed to find one new location.  It's very quiet, no RF interference, and it's kind of off the beaten track.  This place has been right under my nose for some time, I just have never been there to explore what was available.

It's located on the east side of Portsmouth Olympic Harbour, at the end of a small gravel track, right alongside of the old Kingston Pen wall.  Twelve months ago the guards would have told us to move on.....but the place has now been closed down and the guards are the ones who have been moved on.  The spot is within the red circle on the above photo.

If the weather holds I'm planning on operating from their tomorrow, Sunday, 13th April, with the Buddipole and the IC-703. 

CQ WW WPX SSB Contest

Another great weekend on the bands, even if I did have to shut down a few hours early. 10m was very active both days, but Sunday morning was just outstanding on that band, with most of Europe calling CQ there it seemed.

Friday evening was a feast of the South Pacific, on 10m  I managed to work JA3BOA, JR3NZC, JA1ZGP, and JI2ZEY in about 4 minutes.  After I cleared with the last Japanese station I was called by an Hawaiian station, and managed to work three of them in a row, and then I snagged ZL4PLM in Christchurch, New Zealand.  I don't think I've worked a ZL in the last two years.

I didn't work steady at it on Saturday, just a few hours here and there.  I'll be very honest and tell you all that I just wasn't into it for some reason.  No idea why, my mind was just elsewhere.

Sunday morning I was back at it with renewed vigour, obviously a good nights sleep helps a lot.  Two new countries dropped into the log before noon, UA2F in Kaliningrad, and 4V1JR in Haiti.  Both stations were caught on 10m.

I managed to work stations on 80m through 10m, but I mainly stayed on 10m.  I'm also going to have to rebuild my 15m vertical dipole, it's not working as well as I thought it would, and it also seems very "hit and miss" with its contacts.  I think I'll switch it to a regular dipole and see how that works out.

The FT-950 was the rig in action this weekend, along with the 80m OCF dipole and the 15m vertical dipole.

QRP to the Field

I stumbled on this while looking for information on this years event.........

QRP to the Field will be held two weeks later this year so it can be held in conjunction with International SOTA Day and the 10-10 Contest.  This will give us more available contacts and a chance at some good DX.

The new date for your calendar is: Saturday, May 3rd, 2014.  Timings are 1200 UTC to 2359 UTC.

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!