Antennas...

I had quite the fruitful evening, my 80m OCF Dipole is back up in the air....at twice the height it was before.  Thanks to John, VE3JPW, it's now sitting up at 50' in the large pine tree at the back of the garden.

Between John and I, it took us about 20 minutes to get it back up into the tree thanks to a compound bow and a modified arrow.  That's going to be one useful tool at Field Day this June!

I tested it out with a quick check in with Mike, VE3CMM, the net controller for that hour on the ONTARS Net on 3.755.  Mike gave me a solid true 59 after I told him I was after a signal report after putting the antenna back up.  It was only after I had signed off that I realized that my FT-950 was set at 5w output, so it was a true QRP contact, even though it was unintended.  So I was very pleased with the 59 report.

Later I had a sched with Don, VE3MNE, who informed me I had bad RF on my 80m signal.  After playing around with the settings, and changing a piece of coax, it turned out to simply be my mic gain was turned up too high.  It was thankfully a cheap and simply fix.

It looks like I'm all set for the weekend, it will certainly be nice to be back on the air.  Even though I don't plan on a serious effort on this weekends contest, I'm looking forward to putting a good number of DX stations in the log.

ARRL International DX Contest

Coming up next weekend is the ARRL International DX Contest, SSB.  I'm really looking forward to this event this year as it will mean my antenna is finally back in the air!!

I have not made a single HF contact for the whole month of February.  The rest has been great, but it's time to get back on the bands.  Hopefully the weather will cooperate and the antenna will get in the air tomorrow after the club breakfast.

There is always tons of great DX during this contest which runs from 0000 UTC March 7 to 2359 UTC on March 8.  A full 48 hours of contesting.

Rules can be found HERE.

The bands are getting better...slowly, but they are improving.  Hopefully next weekend will have some good propagation for us all to enjoy a bit of that DX.

Hope to work some of you on the bands!!

Mobile Radio Exemption...

This news just in tonight:

The Ontario Ministry of Transportation has “made permanent the exemption under Ontario Regulation 366/09 (Display Screens and Hand-Held Devices) of the Highway Traffic Act for hand-held two-way radios for commercial drivers and Amateur Radio operators.” 

This is about time, it's been a long time coming.  We should never have been under threat of losing our mobile privileges at all....but that's another story.

2020 Plans...

So far it's been a quiet month, I haven't turned a radio on other than my 2m rig.  My 80m OCF Dipole is still down, and with the amount of snow in the back garden it's going to be a hard fix until the melt.

Sitting here writing this it is snowing again, and the wind is steady at 40 kts, not a pleasant day out there at all.

As usual at this time of year I have been planning my operating event schedule, and it's starting to fill up.

In the plans so far...

In April the North America SOTA Spring Activity Weekend on the 18th & 19th, QRP to the Field is the same weekend, so that's two for the price of one.

July 18th & 19th is the CQ WW VHF Contest.  Never done it before, but this year it's on the calendar.

August, no dates yet, will see a small DXPedition head up into Northern Ontario to activate some rare grids and get some rare parks on the air.  I've been invited, and I have the wife permission to go...... but haven't made my mind up on that one yet.

August is also Lighthouse Weekend and the W/VE Island QSO Party, both being held on the same weekend this year, the 22nd & 23rd.

September of course is Chillycon, where the cries of "Beat Eric" sing out amongst the trees.  This year it is being held on the 19th & 20th.

Plans are also afoot to activate a new island in early October.  I'll update that closer to the event.

Well that's it so far, much more to do and plan, but "She Who Must Be Obeyed" needs to be consulted first.

Stay warm everyone!!

Another WFD done...

Another great Winter Field Day down and done.

VE3ULC making the
satellite QSO.

This year we did a "3 Outdoor" QRP entry using the Upper Canada QRP Club callsign of VE3UCC.  It was a tight squeeze in the tent with 7 of us, but we made it work.

We set up the three antennas starting at about noon on Saturday.  I used a HyEndFed 9:1 Balun with 71' of wire, and it worked beautifully, just as advertised.  It went vertical up about 30' in a tree, and the horizontal component was aimed due south.  I also used two 12' radials on it.  The KX3 loved it and tuned it very quickly on all bands - 160m to 6m.  We also had a 80m OCF Dipole up and a EFHWA, both of them up about 40 feet.

Saturday, for most of the day it rained heavily, and that coupled with the snow on the ground made things very wet and damp.  Later in the day it turned to snow and we ended up with another 6" of it.  At least it wasn't very cold, in fact it hovered around 0C for most of the weekend.

Propagation was steady for the weekend and was:  SFI=72. SN=0.  A Index=5, and K Index=1.

The bands were very busy with people calling "CQ WFD", quite unlike several years ago when you hardly ever heard a station calling for WFD.  How times have changed!!

VE3MNE at the satellite station.

I used my KX3 powered by a 12 amp hour battery and was very impressed at how long the battery lasted.  The KX3 pulls very little out of the battery and it lasted forever.

Our main contacts were on 80m, 40m, and 20m.  We heard nothing on 160m, 15m, and 10m.  We did manage simplex contacts on 6m, 2m, and 70cm which added to our multipliers.

We also managed two DX QRP contacts on 20m,  one with Lithuania, and the other to the Canary Islands.  Both were easy to make, even at QRP power levels, and we received good signal reports back from them both.

However, at about 2000 hrs Saturday evening the bands just disappeared.  The signals for the most part just faded away.  Luckily our digital station managed to pull in a few more contacts before we shut down for the night.

Sunday we finally managed to get a satellite contact with a station in Western New York.  That was quite the occasion and the cheers in the tent were deafening.

It took us hardly any time at all to take everything down and coil up antennas and coax, and of course it was raining again.

Now we're looking forward to the warmth of spring so we can get out and play some more portable radio....but you never know, we'll probably be out before the warm hits.

One of our two KX3 stations.

QRP Sprint...

Tonight was the first of a series of QRP sprints being run by the Upper Canada QRP Club.  They are 2 hours in length, and are going to be held every 2 months, with the score being accumulative over the year.

This was the first event I have used my KX3 for since I bought it.   It performed very well, and I was very pleased with it.

Due to last weekends very high winds and bad ice storm, the only antenna I had available to use tonight was my 35.5' vertical wire feeding into a 4:1 balun.   It certainly wasn't the best antenna, it does need to be tweaked, but it did a good job tonight.

I managed to make seven 10w SSB contacts:  4 into Texas, 1 into Colorado, 1 into Ontario, and a great DX contact into the Cayman Islands with ZF2PG.  The last one made my night.  Given where we currently are in the solar cycle, I'm very pleased with the KX3 performance.

The propagation was definitely north-south for the most part.  The propagation numbers at 2030 UTC were:  SFI=71, SN=0, A Index=5, and the K Index=1.

Winter Field Day

Coming up on January 25th & 26th is Winter Field Day.

Information can be found HERE.

This is for ALL hams, not just North Americans.

The New Year...

VE3GO, VA3QV, VE3MNE, VE3WTN, & VE3DZE.

Some of the local characters at the Frontenac Radio Group meeting last night, held at the County Ambulance Logistics Base.

Instead of being out in the cold warehouse next to the command vehicles and support trucks, these guys snuck into the Chief's office.

As a group we are very fortunate to be able to use the logistics base for our meetings.  It also has the benefit that the paramedics, and their supervisors, know who was are.