New Antenna

I decided to put up a second HF antenna the other day as the 80m OCF I have up in the air will not tune on 15m at all.  Now, I know there's not much action on 15m these days....but one can always hope.

It's up in a tree that hangs over my back deck, and the radials are partly on the deck and partly on the lawn.  I built it with used 18 gauge speaker wire that was originally used for my 148' longwire that I took down last year.

After googling a number of different antennas I settled on the following:

So far it has worked great and I have had excellent signal reports from all the stations I have talked to.  It tunes up quickly on every band from 80m up to 6m with the FT-950's built in ATU.  That ATU is no good for mis-matches greater than 3.1 to 1.   

Next weekend is the NY State QSO Party, that will be it's first big test.

New York QSO Party

Coming up next weekend is the New York QSO Party.  I'm hoping the propagation improves before then as I would like to better my QRP score from last year........but things aren't looking too good right now.

Rules can be found HERE.

Being so close to New York State I will be mainly on 40m and 80m with the occasional visit to 160m late at night.  I'll also give 10m and 6m a listen as well, you just never know when they will open up.

Hope to work you on the bands for this event.

KX3

I've made a few contacts on the KX3 now and I'm very impressed with the rig.  People are correct though, the menu system takes quite a bit of getting used to and figure out.....but I'm sure I'll get used to it in the end.

I took it out to the park on Sunday to operate, but unfortunately the SFI was so bad it was just a waste of time.  It seems we had a minor solar storm.

Although operating the radio was a waste of time, I did take time with the help of Rick, VE3ORY, to cut to the correct length the new Packtenna I bought several months ago now.   It will be interesting to see how this antenna performs with the KX3.

Normally when I head to the park I take a pile of equipment with me, weighing several tonnes it seems.  That has changed, I can't get over how light and small my portable kit is now.  My sore back thanks me.

Hopefully, although the weather is starting to turn and get cooler, I will still be able to get out and put the radio through its paces before the snow flies this winter.  It will also make a change for Winter Field Day as it's small enough to operate from the front seat of my van for that event....I might even be able to stay warm.

New Radio....

A new radio arrived at the QTH today, a brand new KX3....with all the bells and whistles.  I've wanted one of these radios for a good number of years, in fact ever since I saw Steve, WG0AT, try one out.  Actually, at the time Steve was trying out KX3 Serial Number 001.

I've heard it's the Rolls Royce of QRP radios, well, we will see this coming weekend when it gets taken out on it's first trip to the park.  I will post a report on how that goes.


It's back to reading the manual now....I don't want to break it on the first time to the park.

La Grosse Ile - QC-010

Coming up on September 29^th, Pierre, VE2GT will be activating Grosse Ile – QC010, and the Irish Memorial National Historic Site CNPOTA QC24.  The Island is also POTA VE-4910 and VEFF-1507.

He will be using 80m to 10m and will be on the air from 1445 UTC to 1815 UTC 

+/- delay of the boat.

You can follow him at: https://aprs.fi/#!call=a%2FVE2GT-5&timerange=3600&tail=3600

It's Come & Gone...

The Campsite.

Well, another Chillycon is over, and what a weekend it was!  Weather wise it was fine, except for Friday night when the winds got up and torrential rain fell for most of the night.  Luckily we all stayed dry and survived.

Attendance was down a bit this year, there seemed to be only a few from Ottawa.  The guys from Kingston and Montreal made up for it though.

Dave, VA3ORP, once again brought the portable bar, and the single malt flowed as usual, and the Pizza supper on Saturday evening was as good as ever.

The propagation for the weekend was: SFI=68, SN=0, A Index=5, K Index=1.  Those numbers did not change all weekend.

Over the weekend a European DX Contest was on, and Saturday afternoon saw us working into Europe at QRP levels with no problem.   I managed to work DL0HN, a club station near Stuttgart, and OM2VL near Bratislava with my FT-817D with 5w on SSB.  The antenna was a 66' wire into a 9:1 unun, and four 16' ground radials.   I also managed to put another 20 North Amercans in the log, including Rick, W6KH from Vista, California, another nice QRP contact.

Don, VE3MNE, won the DX Contest this year with a QRP SSB contact into Saudi Arabia.  He used an FT-857D, dialed back to 5w, with a 20m hamstick mounted on his truck.

Those who didn't make it missed a great weekend, and I'm sure Eric and Stuart will tell the guys in Ottawa just what they missed.  Of course Eric was not pleased that he, once again, did not win the DX Trophy, and is plotting to change some of the rules for next year in his favour.  We did, however, insist that he present the trophy to Don so he could say that at least he got to hold it this year.

Some more pictures of the weekend.......

The VE3FI FT-817ND

If you're going to drink Scotch, drink the good stuff!

VA3AMX presenting the DX Trophy to VE3MNE, this years winner.

Chillycon

Coming up on the weekend of September 14th & 15th, is this years edition of Chillycon.  This is the annual gathering of QRP'ers in Eastern Ontario, sponsored and hosted by the Ottawa QRP Club.

It's held each year at Rideau River Provincial Park, just across the river from the town of Kemptville. It's a small and clean park, and who cater for we amateur radio operators.

As usual a good group will be attending from Kingston again this year......if only to see what single malt scotch Dave, VA3ORP, brings with him.

VA3QV enroute!!

 The weather this year looks very different from last year, when we were
  hit with a heat wave.  This year it looks like we will be back down to the
  usual temperatures and with a bit of rain in the forecast.  We'll go fully
  prepared for whatever Mother Nature can throw at us and see what
  happens.

 Bob, VA3QV, will be making an appearance for a few days, and he will
 be available to sign autographs on Friday night.

 Don't forget if you're going to enter the Chillycon QRP DX
 Contest.....somebody has to beat Eric.

 If you can't make it for the weekend, try and get out and join us for the Saturday, and our traditional Pizza Supper.  Bring your radio, there's lots of operating locations if you join us for the day.

Using 2m...

I was sitting here in the shack today thinking about the international kerfuffle we have just gone through for the past month over 2m, and the possibility of losing it for amateur use.

In several places I have read that if we don’t use 2m we will lose it, in fact that can be said about any of our amateur bands these days, given the level of corporate greed out there.  But, thinking about 2m, when was the last time you heard any traffic on a simplex frequency?  It was probably 3 years ago for me.

Over the past few months I’ve been following a few ham blogs run by UK amateurs, and I’m amazed at the amount of traffic they seem to generate on 2m simplex.    

They have hams that collect Trig Points using 2m to follow the activators.  You never hear of that activity here in Canada.

Some hams collect Grid Squares, we have that in North America as well, but it seems only during contests, and primarily on 6m it seems.

Then there is SOTA. We have SOTA in North America also, but not much is done on 2m simplex, especially here in Ontario.  It’s nowhere near as popular here as it is in Europe.

The UK, and several other countries, also have HEMA, an organization that is similar to SOTA, but for smaller summits.  It’s very popular, but it doesn’t appear to be operating in North America.

Then we have Island and Lighthouse activations, popular all over Europe and the USA, but they don’t seem to attract much attention in Canada.  

It looks like there are plenty of activities to do on 2m, it would seem, however, the real issue is getting people out of their shacks, and getting involved in some of these activities to make sure we don’t lose our frequencies.

Remember, the Europeans only have 144 to 146 and do all of the above activites.  Here in North America we have twice that amount of frequency, 144 to 148, and apart from a pile of dead repeaters that get used once a week for a poorly attended net, not much else goes on.  

Time for a change in the way we do things here I think.