The Rideau Lakes Cycle Tour - 2015 Edition

The VE3CLQ Mobile on Sunday

We had perfect weather for this years edition of the Rideau Lakes Cycle Tour, warm with just a touch of wind.

As in years past my job took me to Perth Road Village were we have two stations operating at the General Store.  One station is the Net Control for the Frontenac Section of the tour, and the other station is the liaison station with the Lanark Section Net.  This system seems to work very well for us and allows the passing of important traffic back and forth between the nets without overloading either net with unwanted information.

There are times though when Perth Road has so many portable masts and antennas in the air it looks like a NATO Divisional HQ......only the camouflage is missing!

This year was a bit different in the way the Tour was operated.  For the first time we had to provide communications to two separate routes, which of course means the operators were spread over a far greater distance.  Our "normal" route follows Perth Road and eventually becomes Division Street in Kingston.  The new route followed a convoluted route from Perth through numerous windy backroads ending up on the Battersea Road and into Kingston.  Both routes end at Queen's University where the riders send the night in the dorms.

So instead of our usual five radio support locations, this year we had eight stations on our net, and surprisingly, contrary to what we thought would happen, things went very smoothly.  Thanks to Scott, VA3PTO, from Ottawa who helped out on our net from one of the new Battersea Road locations.

VE3EOG's go-box in action

The weekend is actually a lot of good fun, and we get to see old friends who man the nine mobile units that run up and down the course providing repairs and rides to exhausted riders.

It wouldn't be the Rideau Lakes Cycle Tour without some excitement and this year we had plenty.  Several ambulances had to be called for various injuries, nothing too serious though.  And, surprisingly we had two bikes that actually failed with broken frames and broke in two!

Long days and lots of fun.  If you haven't taken part in the event yet we can always fit you in.

Riders taking a break at Battersea Village

The new rig in the shack.....

Well after Sunday's disastrous island activation attempt and the death of my much beloved FT-857D, a new radio appeared in the shack this morning.  An IC-718 now graces the bench.

While I would have dearly loved to have replaced the FT-857D with another one, I really could not justify the cost.  The IC-718 was about half the price, and although it doesn't have 6m, 2m, and 440, it will do me very nicely for the portable work I do.

It's a nice compact rig that is packed with options.  I set it up right out the box, attached the antenna, tuned up, and had a QSO with JW9JKA on Bear Island, Norway, and got him on the first call.  While I only received a 51 from him, I was quite pleased as that was done with the factory settings.

The menu system is one that you set and forget.  I had Don, VE3MNE, on the air tonight on 160m and we went through some of the settings and sorted out the mic gain.  Don says the radio sounds very good, in fact the results were very similar to my FT-950.

I think it's a bit big to actually mount in a go-box which is a bit of a draw back to me, but we will figure something out to protect it while we're operating portable.

This weekend I'm out doing the communications for the Rideau Lakes Cycle Tour, and I plan on taking the radio and my Buddypole antenna with me and doing some HF DX chasing in-between the busy times.

The Island Activation that wasn't......

Today started as a dull, rainy and cold day and continued as such as Mark, VE3EOG, and I drove up Hwy 15 to Upper Brewers Mill Island on the Rideau Canal system.

We arrived and started to set up our antennas, ran the radials and coax, and then fired up the radio.......and then.......we discovered we had "issues".   It looks like I now have a dead FT-857D.   To paraphrase Monty Python......."It's an ex-FT-857D".

And so ended the island activation today.

This is the third time we have tried to activate Upper Brewers Mill Island over the past few years and each time something has cropped up and the activation has been unsuccessful.......perhaps we should take the hint and realize the place is jinxed!!

But, just like Baldrick, we have a cunning plan..........plans are already afoot to activate it later in the summer when it least expects it, maybe that will sort out the jinx!!

Thanks to all of you who were waiting to make contact, we could hear you calling, and many thanks to Tim, VA3TIC, for relaying our 2m messages about having some issues there.

Forans Island Activation

Our old friend John, VE3ISE, will be doing a first time activation of Forans Island, FN03, near Grimsby, Ontario.  This is a small island that is scheduled to be a condo development in the near future.....so get it in your log while you can !!

This activation will take place on Tuesday, June 2nd, at 2200 UTC.

John will start out on 40m and move to 20m later.


Frequencies will be:

40m - 7.260 +/- QRM
20m - 14.260 +/- QRM

Let's all hope the propagation improves for this activation.

Island Activation coming up.....

I'll be heading up to Upper Brewers Mill Island on the Rideau Canal system this coming Sunday, May 31st to activate the island.  This is not the first time my club has tried to do this, most of the previous occasions we have not managed to make enough contacts to have it granted an official number.

The plan is to set up by the locks and operate two HF stations and a VHF station.

Timings for the activation are 1400 UTC to 1800 UTC.

Frequencies will be +/- :

7.250
14.250 to 14.260
28.450
50.125 (depending on propagation)

Callsign in use will be VE3FRG.

Bouvet Island DXpedition - 2016

Sad news today that Mark, ON4WW, will not be doing the Bouvet Island DXpedition next year.  

Mark's plan was to do a solo DXpedition and to do it over a three month period.  Over that amount of time nearly every ham who needed Bouvet Island could have had it in their logbooks on numerous occasions, and on several bands.

Unfortunately, Mark was unable to collect sufficient funding for this adventure.  For some reason the big DXpedition supporters and donors were not very interested in this event and not many donations came through.

Mark had received permission for Bouvet from the Norwegian Polar Institute, his wife (very important!!), and his employer to have 5 months leave without pay.  I'm sure Mark is bitterly disappointed that his year long planning has been all for nothing.

I think Mark's plan to go solo, although a bit controversial, is one way of keeping these DXpeditions to far away and remote locations sustainable.  If we look at the cost of doing some of the more recent DXpeditions, including K1N, they have been out of this world.  I truly believe that smaller and more compact teams are the answer to keeping the skyrocketing costs down.  

For safeties sake I think it would be a lot safer to go with a minimum of three people, going solo does seem a bit dangerous to me, but that's Mark's decision to make, as he knows his own limitations better than anyone.

One must ask if we really need five to eight HF stations on the air, all at the same time?  Or, could a DXpedition get by with just two or three?  Do we need to be spending thousands of dollars transporting beams and Yagi's to these remote sites.........when many of us work the world on simple dipoles at home with no problems?   Perhaps the whole idea of how Expeditions are conducted needs to be reconsidered and discussed in depth.  Bigger is not always better!

While I occasionally dream of doing a major DXpedition to some far off remote location, I think for now I'll stick with my own mini-DXpeditions to Wolfe and Simcoe Islands, where the most expensive aspect of the trip is buying lunch on the way back.  That's more in keeping with my budget.......

Bouvet Island from the sea

An interesting morning....

It's been a beautiful day here in Kingston, 20C under mainly blue skies.  I have been busy over the winter season trying to lose some weight, and as a result have been walking just about every day at the Cataraqui Centre Mall.  This has allowed me to walk and climb stairs and get into shape for the "season", and it's amazing just how many people are in that mall each day just walking.

Anyway, yesterday I decided that the weather is becoming far too nice to walk indoors and it's about time I switched things up and hit the K&P Trail, part of the "Rails to Trails" program.

Of course the real reason I'm exploring this trail is to find some new QRP portable operating locations.  So far it's been a bust, but there is a lot more to walk before I give up.  It was a fantastic walk today, lots of birds singing in the trees, the Trilliums are starting to bloom along the trail edges, and lots of Garter snakes out sunning on the path as well.

Of course before I went to the trail I did spend 30 minutes playing up on 40m.  I checked into the Trans-Provincial Net which meets on 7.055 MHz daily 7am to 5pm.   Not every hour slot is filled so if you don't hear a controller get on and call CQ Trans-Provincial Net, you never know who will reply to you.

Take today, guess who popped in and called me???  Yes, the Big Bobster himself, VA3QV, with a screaming 5 watts coming from his Flex-1500.  I gave Bob a 55-57 into Kingston and Tony, VE3DWI, up in Debarats also gave him the same signal report.  Not too shabby for 5w at that time of day.

All in all, a good day......and I got to chat with Bob!

Buddipole Experiments Part 2

16' 8" fully extended whip

The last piece of equipment that got tested today was the SkyWhip Portable Telescopic Antenna that I bought from Durham Radio a few months ago.   Due to the bad weather it's sat in my Buddipole case until today.

This antenna has a fully extended length of 16' 8", and can be used for any band between 6m and 20m.   I certainly would not use it in a stiff breeze fully extended, but with the light breeze I had today it was fine.

The good thing about this piece of gear is that it fits the Buddipole parts perfectly, I don't have to carry different mounts for it.

I wanted to try the antenna on 20m, so I set it up on the 8' painter pole over average ground, just like the other tests I did today.

Using the SkyWhip Portable Telescopic Antenna and the TRSB set at 1:1, at 14.150 the SWR was 1.2:1 and I used a 15' 10" counterpoise.  It worked as advertised the very first time.  Beauty!!

So it looks like I'm all set for the planned island and lighthouse activations I have planned this summer.  Some of these antennas may even get thrown in the mix for this years Field Day.

Coming up as soon as I can find time will be the same type of article on the Buddipole 40m, 60m, and 80m antennas.