Winter Field Day 2016

Also coming up at the end of the month is Winter Field Day........this year it's under new management as SPAR has folded up and faded away.  Taking the place of SPAR as the sponsor is the Winter Field Day Association....Link HERE for the rules, etc.

This will be the eighth year our Club has taken part in this event.  The cottage we had booked for this event was cancelled on us, so the club is not sure what we are going to be doing, but we will be doing something......probably at one of the members workshops.

Winter Field Day also has a very active Facebook page HERE.

This is a great opportunity to operated for 24 hours under less than adequate conditions and to test your emcomm capabilities under winter conditions.  Given the fact that this large country of ours has many months of ice, cold and snow a year, it's something we need to practice.   Not every emergency happens in summer.

It should be noted that Winter Field Day is NOT just for North American stations.  Feel free to participate no matter where you are.

NAQP 2016

Coming up this weekend is the SSB portion of the North American QSO Party........I'd almost forgotten about it to be honest....

Last year I didn't do very well in this contest so I'm hoping for a large improvement this year.  I think with the second HF antenna up in the air the I should do OK, at least I'll have 15m this year....

Brought to you by the fine folks at the National Contest Journal, it lasts for only 12 hours, and runs from 1800 UTC January 16 to 0600 UTC January 17.

The up-to-date rules can be found HERE.

WSPR....Again

Another bad weather day here in Kingston, heavy blowing snow and winds up to 70 kph, not a nice day to be outside, but a perfect day to be in the shack.....  The snow was drifting up to three feet in my driveway, so it was a busy afternoon of shovelling as well.

We are expecting this sort of weather for the rest of the week, so the chair in the shack will be occupied a lot....

Since Christmas I have been spending a lot of time playing around with digital signals, first with WSPR, and now with PSK31.  In the last two days I've managed to work 29 countries on PSK31, including Panama and Israel.  It took a while for me to get used to the macros, and getting them set up correctly, but now that it's working as I want it to work I'm having a blast.

The big thing that sticks out for me is the lack of DQRM, LIDS and Band Police.  Maybe it's early days for me yet, but I'm enjoying the peace and quiet compared to SSB.

Today I also spent some time back on WSPR to see how the propagation was doing.  The picture below shows the results for 1820 UTC today.  The SFI was 109, SN=41, A Index=14, and the K Index=2.  This was done today with 1w.

2016 Plans...

Happy New Year to everyone, hope your holidays were quiet and full of good DX...

Things have been pretty quiet around this QTH apart from some PSK31 operating.  Plans are currently being made for some "micro-DXpeditions" in 2016.  There are a couple of islands and lighthouses that I would like to get on the air this year, but trying to fit it all into the family schedule is getting harder to do.

The "pre-pre-planning" for Field Day has already started.  Our club will once again be running two separate FD sites, and we're sorting out who's going where in order to make sure we have full capabilities at both sites.

Winter Field Day is also nearly upon us, that takes place on January 30th - 31st.  Link for that event is HERE.   Field Day doesn't always take place in the good weather!

I'm sure this year will be a busy one.  I have decided that once the weather warms up I'm going to operate portable at every chance I can get.  I missed out on a pile of rare DX last year, so my goal this year is to try and get as much of that rare DX as I can.

Where I want to spend next summer.......

See You Next Year!!

More WSPR

Yesterday was a good day to hide and stay the heck out of the kitchen.  So I decided it would be a good time to go and do a couple of hours on WSPR.

The propagation conditions seems to be pretty good on 20m, so here's a look at what 500mW got me around 1700 UTC.

Here's the shot into Europe

Here's the shot into North America......not too many Canadian stations about....

Radio used was the IC-718 into my 148' Inverted L long wire antenna.

Merry Christmas

May peace, happiness and goodwill be with you and your family not only on Christmas, 
but throughout the year and beyond. 

From my house, to your house, 
here's wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a

Happy New Year for 2016.

RAC Winter Contest

Not a bad weekend on the bands for this years RAC Winter Contest.  For once the stars aligned and all my equipment and the propagation worked as advertised.

I should let you all know that my new 148' Inverted L long wire antenna worked exactly as advertised.  It also seems to give me a very strong signal into the heart of Europe on 15m and 20m.

The bands were very noisy on Friday night as the contest started, I had a noise floor of S7 here....which is very unusual for me.  This settled  down on Saturday and levelled out at about an S4.

Contacts were made on every band from 2m to 160m.  The only places I did not manage to get a single contact with was the NWT and Nova Scotia.   I also listened for Bob, VA3QV, but never heard a peep from him........Liz must have him in chains again....

The propagation numbers to start the weekend were: SFI=116.  SN=52.  A Index=5.  K Index=1.  These numbers stayed that way for just about the whole weekend, late Saturday saw the SN go down to 44, but that was the only change.

The big surprise for me this year was the large number of DX stations taking part.  I worked stations in Bermuda, Netherlands, Germany, Belize, Colombia, Italy, Spain, USA, and France, all of whom are giving out contact serial numbers.  It's nice to see this contest spread out around the world.

That's it for this year, no more contests and only two more club nets till next year......when we start it all over again.  Where does the time go??