Rideau Lakes Cycle Tour

Don, VE3MNE

It's been a very busy weekend here in Kingston as the Rideau Lakes Cycle Tour took place and the Frontenac Amateur Radio Club provided communications for it.  Including setup and tear down time we were on the job twelve hours on Saturday and seven on Sunday, and 0445 came real early Sunday morning.....

The weather was not the warmest over the weekend and we saw very little of the blue skies we looked forward to.  In fact we spent most of the weekend in sweatshirts and jackets to stay warm.   Instead of good weather we got high winds and a bit of rain.

Thanks to the rain our setup at Perth Road Village was a bit muddy for Don and I, and the winds did not help getting the 24' mast up into the air.

We had two stations on the air at Perth Road Village.  One was a liaison station on the VHF Lanark Net and the other was our own net control on the UHF Frontenac repeater.  We had a 5/8 ground plain 2m antenna on a 24' mast and a 7 element yogi for 440 on a 16' painter pole.  Both worked as designed.

There were 2023 cyclists on the road at any one time this year.  The tour goes from Algonquin College in Ottawa to Queen's University in Kingston on the Saturday, and on Sunday it goes back to Ottawa over the same routes.

Over the weekend the communications teams only had to do two 911 calls for hurt riders, but due to the rain and cold temperatures on Sunday we had a lot of requests from the cyclists for pickups and rides as they dropped out as they were not dressed for the cold.

We have some changes to do for next year, they have moved our usual site at Queen's to a new location at the other end of the campus. Unfortunately the new location is in a very bad location for radio work.  So it looks like we have lots of testing to do.

It was great to see our old friends from Ottawa, who provide the mobile communications in the support vehicles on the route.

The RLCT 2016 is over.......and now we get ready for Field Day !!

Mike in "Repair 2" in action at Perth Road Village

The "Command Post"

Riders at Perth Road Village

Leo, VE3BLR at Inverary

Busy Weekend....

Coming up this weekend is the Rideau lakes Cycle Tour.  This year my club is providing communications from nine locations instead of our usual five, so we are spread quite thin this year.

As usual 2300 bicyclists will thunder down County Roads 10 and 11 from Ottawa and Perth to Kingston on Saturday, and return home to Ottawa on Sunday using the same routes.

The weather isn't looking too good for Saturday right now, but I'm hoping that will change over the next two days.....why not?.....the forecast has changed every day this week so far.

I've spent the past few days sorting out my portable VHF and UHF equipment for this activity.....now if I could just remember where I put the 2m/440 dual band antenna I'd be a happy camper..... It's amazing just how much equipment one of these events actually requires to make it a success.

Once this event is over it's then down to the final planning for Field Day.

What a great day !!

The SSB Station looking over the water towards Kingston

The day started off not so well........as I backed out of the garage heading to the clubs Sunday breakfast it was raining quite heavily.  Thankfully that only lasted about 15 minutes and then it started to brighten up a bit.

By the time we left the restaurant it was cloudy but really humid, and it was to stay that way for most of the day.  The ferry ride over to Wolfe Island, ON-009, was uneventful.....smooth sailing all the way for the 30 minute trip.

The propagation numbers for the day left a lot to be desired:  SFI=87, SN=31, A Index=14, and the K Index=2 at 1420 UTC.

For this activation we chose to set up at the winter ferry dock, about five km from town.  This dock is only used during the winter or other periods of low water, and is a quiet spot that nobody goes near when it's not in use.  The rest of the year the ferry arrives at the main dock near the centre of the small village of Marysville.

We had two stations on the air, both using the clubs VE3FRG callsign.  One was on SSB and the other was a digital station.  We had three other operators besides myself out for this activation, Dave VE3DZE, Brian VA3BAH, and Rick VE3ORY.

The digital station was not very successful, but the SSB station made a total of 74 contacts, of which only three were Canadian, the rest were all from the USA.  Most of the contacts were made on 20m, the other bands we expected to use were useless due to the poor propagation.

The winter ferry dock has definite possibilities for future use as it's very RF quiet there.  All in all it as a good day, a little humid perhaps, but any day outside playing radio is a good one!

VE3DZE and VA3BAH hanging around at the Digital station

Wolfe Island

Coming up next Sunday, May 29th.......... The Frontenac Radio Group will be activating Wolfe Island, ON-009.

Hopefully the weather will be a bit better than the last activation we did on Simcoe Island.  So far the forecast is for hot sticky weather with a high of 33C.

Wolfe Island will activate as VE3FRG.

Another group from the club will be activating Howe Island, ON-023, at the same time.  Howe Island will activate as VE3UDO.

Timings for both activations will be from 1400 UTC to 1800 UTC.

Frequencies will be:

7.250
14.250 - 14.260
50.125
144.200

Hope to work you guys on the air.

A cold and windy day......

The VE3CLQ mobile showing the great weather!

Today was the activation of Simcoe Island, ON-022 and despite the weather is was a roaring success.

It was very cold and windy, temperature was 4C with a west wind of 40 kph gusting to 50 kph. The low temperature coupled with the heavy driving rain made for a very cold and uncomfortable day

We managed to put 41 contacts in the log between 40m and 20m.  Radios were a FT-897D and a FT-857D.  Antennas were a 20m Buddipole set up as a vertical, and a 33' Chillicon Special.  Both did very well given the poor band conditions we had.

The numbers were:  SFI=102, SN=88, A Index=10, and K Index=2 as of 1500 UTC.  We had very deep QSB on 20m that did make life a bit difficult at times.

Contacts were mainly Canadian and American, but the 20m station did make contact with NP2/NE6V in the US Virgin Islands and with EI9JU in Ireland.  Unfortunately the Irish contact wasn't completed because of the QSB.

I am happy to report that my portable station worked as advertised after spending the past 6 months in the shack closet, but my 82ah deep cycle battery needs a few good workouts as it faded in about three hours.

All in all a great day, even if it was supposed to be spring.........

Dave VE3DZE operating 40m in his van.

A rainy & windy ferry trip.

Simcoe Island

The Wolfe Island ferry passing the Royal Military College.

Coming up next Sunday, May 15th.......... The Frontenac Radio Group will be activating Simcoe Island, ON-022.  This is our groups first activation of the year.

The Group has invited the students from the local ham course to come along and operate on HF under their supervision.

Timings will be from 1400 UTC to 1800 UTC.

Frequencies will be:

7.250
14.250 - 14.260
144.200

The operators will be operating from the Nine Mile Point Lighthouse, CAN-578, so you can get two for one with this activation.

More WSPRing...

While the propagation doesn't seem to be getting any better, and given the place we are in this solar cycle, I doubt it will, the bands were not too bad yesterday.

I had a few good PSK31 contacts into Europe yesterday afternoon which did surprise me, but their signals were pretty solid on the waterfall.   Once I had worked everyone I could I switched over and tried WSPR for a while.

Here's the results....

This was 20m at 1430 UTC.  500Mw using my 148' inverted L longwire antenna.

This was 17m at 1638 UTC - using the same antenna and power setting as above.

Given our position in this dying solar cycle, I think it's going to be very interesting to watch on WSPR - and see just what we can do with low power communications when we get to the solar minimum.   I believe this will be the first one that WSPR will be available for.

Lonely Tonight......

I thought I would do a bit of 20m WSPR tonight before supper.  So, I set things up and went off to eat.  I came back about 40 minutes later and here's what I found....

Yep, that's it.  One very lonely contact.  I have never seen 20m so empty as tonight.   Oh well, there's always tomorrow....