Chillycon is coming !!!

The 2018 version of the Ottawa Valley QRP Societies Fall Camping Weekend, known as Chillycon, is just about upon us.  

This year it's on September 15^th& 16th, starting Friday afternoon - the 14th (and for some......Thursday afternoon), QRP fanatics from all over Eastern Ontario descend upon Rideau River Provincial Park for this annual gathering.  The park is just across the Rideau River from Kemptville.  We’re glad this year to be back at our usual park, as last year we had to go to Murphy’s Point due to heavy flooding at Rideau River Provincial Park.

Chillycon is always a great time, this will be my ninth year attending this event.  Not once have I ever returned home without learning something about radios or antennas.  It's educational, and the company is fantastic.  It really is a fixed event on our club calendar these days.

A lot of the participants come for the whole weekend, others just come for Saturday afternoon as well as the single malt whiskey and traditional pizza supper we hold.  If you're planning on bringing any whiskey to the event.....please.....no blended stuff !!

Seven of us from Kingston, VE3MNE, VA3ORP, VE3ORY, VE3ULC, VE3UNA and myself, will be attending this year…….oh yeah, the seventh guy……well that would be the world famous VA3QV who now lives in Kingston.

There will also be a VE2 contingent again from the West Island Amateur Radio Club in Montreal.  I’m looking forward to seeing Marc-Andre and the others again this year.

Hopefully the weather and propagation will behave themselves.  I'm going full out this year to beat Eric, my arch rival, for the "Upper Canada Cup for QRP DX Excellence at Chillycon.

Stay tuned for the post-event wrap-up.

W/VE Island QSO Party, 2018

Simcoe Island Ferry

Coming up this weekend, to promote the U.S. (USI) and Canadian (CIA) islands programs to amateurs worldwide, and to promote verifiable amateur radio contacts with stations located on islands in the U.S. and Canada.

Always a relaxing time and a lot of fun, looking forward to being on Simcoe Island, ON-022, and I will also be able to hand out the Nine Mile Point Lighthouse number, as I will be set up right there.  The Lighthouse is CAN-578.

Hopefully the weather forecast for Kingston this weekend is either wrong, or it changes from what it is supposed to be, and let's hope the propagation gets a little bit better.

Rule for the event can be found HERE.

Nine Mile Point Lighthouse, CAN-578.

International Lighthouse Lightship Weekend

Get ready......this years edition of the International Lighthouse Lightship Weekend is coming up on August 18th & 19th !!

Details of the event are HERE.

The objectives of the ILLW weekend are to promote public awareness of Lighthouses and Lightships and bring to the attention of the public the need to preserve and restore them for future generations.  In doing so we also promote amateur radio.

I'm still not sure where I'll be heading off to....choices, choices, choices!!  There is a page listing all Lake Ontario Lighthouses ( HERE ).  I'll have to spend an hour on the site and pick one before next weekend.

Let's hope the propagation improves before next Saturday otherwise it will just be another good day of suntanning !!

Saturday at the Bay...

The view from the portable shack.

While we had great weather, hot and sticky is a good description for last Saturday out at Hay Bay.   Don VE3MNE, and I, went out to his property, the one we use for Field Day, and tried to work the guys in Colorado up on the Colorado 14er's and those taking part in the Rocky Mountain Rendezvous.

At 1406 UTC the propagation numbers were, SFI = 69; SN = 0; A Index = 6; and the K Index = 2.   We also suffered most of the day with very deep QSB on all bands.

20m seemed to be the band of choice, very little heard on 40m and 15m, but 6m was pretty active.

Not only did we work the Colorado SOTA operators, I also worked a couple of other interesting stations.

N1S, a special event station in Massachusetts at the Derby Wharf Lighthouse, US-224.

WA5DTK, operating aboard the battleship, USS Texas, located at San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site in Texas.

W6PNG, operating from SOTA summit W6/WH-008, located at the north end of Death Valley in Southern California.

Radio used that day was my FT-897D, and the antenna was a 80m OCF Dipole up at 90'.  

Rocky Mountain Rendezvous 2018

Coming up this weekend....August 4 & 5 is this years Rocky Mountain Rendezvous which operates alongside the Colorado 14er Event.

From their website:

"Amateur Radio operators from around Colorado will be climbing many of Colorado's 14,000-foot mountains and Summits On The Air (SOTA) peaks to set up amateur radio stations in an effort to communicate with other radio amateurs across the state and around the world. Join in on the fun during the 27^th annual event and see how many of the mountaintop stations you can contact. This year the event is expanded to include the entire weekend. However, many mountaintop activators will hit the trail early with the goal of being off the summits by noon due to lightning safety concerns."

I'm hoping to get out to Hay Bay and work a few using the clubs Field Day antennas.

Hay Bay

Hay Bay

Great day today out at the property at Hay Bay doing "Radio Stuff" with Rick, VE3ORY.

A few months ago I purchased a "Band Springer" portable antenna from SOTABeams in the UK......regardless of the "amazing reviews" on the SOTABeams website, I have never been able to get this antenna to work - AT ALL - so, I ended up with this wire antenna that just wouldn't tune on any band whatsoever.

A week ago I had an exchange of messages with Steve - WG0AT, about the wire antenna he uses on his SOTA activations.  It turns out that there was enough wire in the Band Springer antenna to remake it into a copy of Steve's antenna.

Rick and I got out the large tape measure and the Band Springer, and started to measure and cut it to Steve's antenna measurements.  Once it was cut and reassembled we hooked it up to analyzer and gave it a good checking over.  It works from 40m and up, and has a 3.1:1 SWR on every band, not good - but usable with a tuner.

My FT-879D was hooked up to it and we made three contacts in quick succession, K7V in Helena, MT; N4GNO in Alabaster, AL; and W9W in Oshkosh, WI.  All three gave me good signal reports after I asked for "true" reports instead of the standard "59", so I'm happy with this antenna.

For those interested in the details of the antenna, it was recut to a radiator of 41', a counterpoise of 17', and it uses a 9:1 unun.  In fact we cut two 17' counterpoises and used them both.

Not a bad day...

This years IARU HF Championship is over.  I didn't work at it too hard as I really wasn't feeling too well yesterday, but I had fun.

The day started with some pretty quiet bands, there seemed to be very few stations calling CQ, and I worked those fairly quickly putting all of the North American and Caribbean zones in the log.  Propagation was not good, just ok.  At 1300 UTC on the 14th July the SFI = 73, SN = 0, A Index = 6, and the K Index = 2.  Those figures stayed pretty much stable for most of the next 24 hours.

There was some deep QSB on the bands on Saturday, which of course always struck at the wrong time.  Stations being received at S9+ would just disappear in an instant.  And then there was my all time favourites causing issues....the tuner uppers !!!  Why these jerks haven't learned to move slightly off frequency to tune up is beyond me....and why do they take 5 minutes to tune ???

It was about 1500 UTC when the first European stations started to be heard on 20m, and only the guys running "too much power" could work them at first...which is a good thing because they were then out of the way for we low power mortals to get in there and work them.   This opening to the EU lasted about an hour and a half, and I managed to work a good number of EU stations with no trouble using my 80m OCF Dipole. The good news is that the EU stations came back with a vengeance starting at around 2300 UTC and lasted until I shut down around 0300 UTC.

Although I managed to work less stations than last year, I still managed to put 42 countries in my log, and I'm quite happy with that.  My antennas worked as expected and as advertised.  I mainly used the 80m OCF Dipole, but did use the vertical every now and then.  Stations were worked on 40m, 20m, and 15m.  I didn't hear a soul on 10m or 80m all contest.

Surprisingly this year I heard no African stations.  Normally Morocco and Cape Verde are in there with a number of stations, but I didn't hear them at all.

My only real complaint..besides the tuner uppers....is for operators to slow down.  You need to leave some space in your endless CQ calls.  If you don't leave a space we can't get in there to answer you....and then we both miss a contact....oh yeah, and please us standard phonetics.

2018 IARU HF Championship

Coming up this weekend, what should be one of the best DX contests of the year, the IARU HF Championships.  Hopefully the propagation will be decent and the bands will work as they should.  

The idea of the contest is to contact as many other amateurs, especially IARU member society HQ stations, around the world as possible using the 160, 80, 40, 20, 15 and 10 meter bands......I doubt 10m will have much action this weekend, but you never know, stranger things have happened.

Dates for the event are from 1200 UTC 14th July to 1200 UTC on 15th July.

Rules for the event can be found HERE.

Plans here at the QTH are underway to get my 31' vertical up in the air, and my ground radials laid by Friday at the latest.  This will give me a 80m OCF dipole up at 40', a 148' inverted L longwire up at 50', and a multi band (40m through 10m) 31' vertical for the contest.  

Good luck to everyone taking part!!