A Pretty Good Day...

I decided to activate Sharbot Lake and Silver Lake Provincial Parks yesterday, and it turned out to be pretty good. First of all the weather was excellent, 23C (73F) under clear blue skies. The warmest day here so far this year.

I also found out that you don't have to pay the day use fee if you present a veterans card, this is valid Monday through Friday. Needless to say my card will be getting a lot of use this coming season! The cost of entering the provincial parks is getting out of hand.

Propagation wise it was the best it's been in the last few weeks, but still not terrific. The numbers were: SFI=133, SN=102, A Index=8, and the K Index=2. Once again the QSB was very bad and I missed at least  two Park to Park contacts because their signal disappeared completely before I could complete the contact.

Best contact of the day was Larry, F5PYI, on 20m. I managed to work Larry in each park. Radio was my trusty KX3 at 10w, and my usual Hamstick antennas.

Here's the days contact map:

Stay Safe Out There!

Good Book...

Just received my copy of Salty Walt's Antenna Book. Highly recommended!! If you're into building your own portable antennas for POTA & SOTA, or just messing about in your garden....this is the book for you.

I bought my copy from Amazon.ca, which was a lot cheaper than direct from the ARRL. 

Lot's of projects for next winter, and while these are shown as "portable" antennas, there's no reason they couldn't be put up on a more permanent basis for the main QTH.

Stay Safe Out There!

A Propagation Upturn...

It's been 10 days since I have been out doing an activation, mainly due to the very poor propagation and the futility of trying to operate QRP in such conditions. Yesterday wasn't too bad on the bands, for a change so I decided to get out and give it a try again.

It took 40 minutes to get 17 contacts in the log. I managed 11 SSB on 20m and 6 CW on 40m, so I was fairly happy with that. The radio in use was my KX2, and my usual hamsticks. The bands look even better this morning, so I think I'll be doing another trip today. 

A few new antenna parts are on order from various companies to put together a ground mounted vertical, more on this when the parts arrive. I'm hoping the new antenna will help simplify things for me. I hate doing POTA activations with a 10 metre collapsible mast, the less attention I can draw to me the better I like it...and let's be honest, not every park is suitable to erect a mast and wire.

Yesterday the propagation was: SFI=119, SN=93, A Index=13, and the K Index=3. There was very deep QSB as well. As you can see for the contact map above, 20m was very short, except for the single opening into St. Kitts and Nevis.

Stay Safe Out There!

The Week That Was...

What a lousy week, both propagation wise and weather wise. No park activations got done, and very little radio at all was done. The propagation doesn't look like it will improve much before Tuesday at the moment. This is thanks to a coronal hole stream heading our way.

We've also had heavy rains and thunderstorms through the area over the past 48 hours, so that hasn't helped either.

Hopefully, I'll be able to get out on Tuesday with a new antenna I would like to test during a POTA activation. Photo's to follow if conditions are good!

Stay Safe Out There!

Back to the Parks...

Circumstances have changed around the QTH over the past few days. My Mother-in-Law, who has lived with us for the past 12 years, will be moving into a long term care home tomorrow, as her dementia has reached the point we can no longer care for her at home, she now needs full time professional care. 

This means that as of tomorrow I will no longer be tied to the house everyday helping take care of her. It also means my sainted wife will now be able to do things she has been putting off for the past few years. While it will be very strange not to have Mother-in-Law here with us, she will be close enough that we can easily visit her every day.

Once a few outstanding chores have been taken care of around here, I will be able to activate local parks as often as I wish. I'm also planning on travelling to new parks that I have not been to yet; I'm really looking forward to this.

It's been a week since I have managed to get out to the local parks and do an activation. This was a 50/50 split between lousy propagation and my obligations around the QTH. 

This morning I managed to get out and actually play radio in a park. Propagation was not the best, the SFI was sitting at 152, SN=87, A Index= 26, and the K Index=2. The old Sun has not been on its best behaviour all week, and today proved no different. It was very surprising at just how quiet 40m was today, with my processor turned off I had no background noise at all, just clear audio. You don't get that very often.

I did manage to put 19 contacts in the log, all on 40m, which was strange as 40m was shown to be in poor shape. There were no prizes given for DX contacts today, just solid contacts around the Eastern Seaboard.

Here's todays contact map:

Stay Safe Out There....and May the Fourth Be With You!!

QRP To The Field...

Here's a surprise.....I've just been told that unknown to everyone, this year's QRP to the Field Event has been delayed a week and will take place this coming Saturday, April 26.

Here's a link to the rules page HERE.

This is good news as the bands were absolute garbage last Saturday when it was originally planned to happen. I didn't do very well because of the conditions, and never submitted a log. Good job I didn't as I can do it all over again this Saturday, and hope for much better conditions.

I can't get upset over this screwup this year at all.  Paul, NA5N, has just within the past 2 weeks lost his wife, and I'm sure he has other things on his mind right now.

So there you go, another chance to get out and play QRP radio coming up this Saturday.

Stay Safe Out There!

This Coming Weekend...

Lots of activities coming up this weekend!

First up is the POTA Support Your Parks Spring Event. This starts at 0001 UTC on Saturday, April 19, and runs till 2359 UTC 0n Sunday, April 20. I'm planning on activating a few parks for this event, and hopefully the propagation gods will cooperate for a change.

These events are a good way of boosting your POTA contacts, and of course you can also upload the same log(s) to the WWFF program.

The next event we didn't think was going to happen, but it will be happening after all. That's QRP to the Field. The link takes you to last year's page, but there have been no changes to the Rules for this year. The page will be updated soon, but Paul, NA5N, lost his wife, Jan, N0QT, a week ago and very obviously has had other priorities in his life. 

The third event this coming weekend is the Ontario QSO Party. I have done this contest in the past, but not for many years now. They do have a QRP category.

It's also the Easter long weekend here in Ontario. Enjoy yourselves, but please stay safe.

A Less Than Stella Day...

Today was the first day this year I have been able to leave the house without a jacket and gloves on - it was that warm. Just a glorious day!

Lemoine Point & Kingston Airport

However, as good as the weather was, the bands were not that good at all. In fact they were really awful. I set out this morning with the goal of completing 2 POTA activations, and while it took a lot longer than normal, I did get the job done. 

The QSB was particularly bad, with signals fading from S9 to S2 instantly. This of course caused me to lose a number of otherwise good contacts. 

I started the day on 10m CW and made a couple of contacts into the USA. When those contacts dried up I moved to 15m SSB and made some contacts into the US Gulf states, and as a total surprise Emanuele, IU3LYJ, in Northern Italy called me and gave me an S5 signal report. Then it was on to 40m SSB to finish off the activation.

I took a break for lunch, and met my wife at a local restaurant - which we don't often do. Once lunch was over it was off to the next activation. Conditions had not improved, in fact they had got worse. That activation was done entirely on 40m SSB, and I was lucky enough to work 2 stations who were at different 3fers, which allowed me to complete the activation.

Today was really not the day to be running QRP, but I did, and to make it worse I used my hamsticks mounted to the roof of my truck. If nothing else I proved to myself QRP can still do it even under very poor conditions.

Propagation today was: SFI=165, SN=80, A Index=20, and the K Index=3.

Here's my contact map from the morning activation:

And here's the map for the afternoon activation:

Let's all hope the propagation starts to improve again!

Stay Safe Out There!