North America SOTA Day

From J.P Couture, VA2SG.......

The North American SOTA Associations (Canada and the USA) will have an operating event on Nov 13, 2010 from 1200utc to 2400 utc on Nov 14th, 2010. The goal is to encourage NA SOTA summit activations and expand the awareness of this unique operating program in North America. More information about SOTA can be found at http:/www.sota.org.uk.

Summit activation teams will use all the licensed bands from VHF FM/SSB to the HF frequencies for CW and SSB. Typical operating frequencies are 146.52, 144.200, 7.040, 10.116, 14.060, 14.282, and 14.342.5.

Currently there are established SOTA Associations for VE1, VE2, VE7, W1, W2, W3, W5, W6, W7, and W0 with more on the way!

The British SOTA Program encourages both summit Activators and and home-QTH Chasers through an extensive Awards program. Patterned after the IOTA program, SOTA is very popular in Europe and is quickly catching on in the North America as well as other countries. This will become an annual event for the NA SOTA Associations. Please visit the Yahoo Group site for more information and/or questions: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nasota/

What I remember - Part 2

Alfred John Saunders, 1892 – 1981, was my great uncle and to me he was my “Uncle Alf’. He was known as something of a character within the family - a label he wore with some pride. He was forever in trouble with my mother for his repeated sneaking forays up to my bedroom when I was very young, to slip me cookies.

Uncle Alf was just a very ordinary man.  He worked hard all his life and looked after his family to the very best of his ability. But Uncle Alf was also a very brave man, and although he rarely ever spoke of it, he had gone through several nightmares during WW1.


Liverpool Scottish cap badge

 At the outbreak of WW1 Uncle Alf joined the 1st Bn The Liverpool Scottish, and was quickly trained and shipped off to the western front. We know he fought at the Battle of Hooge on 16th June 1915, and at the first Battle of the Somme in 1916.

At some point after that he and his platoon were tasked to dig a mine under the German trenches, and dig they did. However, the Germans heard them digging and dug a counter mine under them. The race was on to see who could blow up their mine first. The Germans won and Uncle Alf, and those of his platoon who survived, spent seven days buried underground before they were dug out and rescued. At this point he was discharged from the army as unfit for further service.

Now any normal man would have said enough was enough, and that he had certainly done his fair share of duty. Not Uncle Alf!

You see when he was 14 he ran away to sea, and spent eight years sailing between Australia and Liverpool. This was not on steamships, but on real sailing ships. His stories of going around the Horn in winter were enough to make me turn my back on the sea for life. I have no desire to spend up to four months tacking back and forth off the Horn, freezing cold, always soaking wet, and climbing 100 feet aloft to change sails. Eventually through a lot of hard work he gained his Master Mariners Certificate and walked the quarterdeck.

So there he was back home in Liverpool, discharged from the Army as unfit to serve in the trenches, and looking for, as he put it, “something to do”. Well, off he went and joined the Royal Navy. With his Master Mariners Certificate in hand he was given command of HM Trawler Everton, sweeping mines in the River Mersey and the Irish Sea. One day while sweeping the Everton hit a mine and quickly sank. Uncle Alf spent several hours in the cold water before being rescued, and ended up with lungs full of bunker oil.

Uncle Alf and his crew

After a few months at home recovering, he was discharged from the Royal Navy as being unfit for further service. Shortly after, guess who went to the Army recruiting center and tried to join the army again? Lucky for us he didn’t pass the medical that time, or who knows where he would have ended up.

I last saw Uncle Alf in January 1981 at his flat in Prestatyn, North Wales, where he still lived alone. I was on leave from the Royal Air Force and we spent an hour talking about all things military, drinking tea and eating his famous biscuits, he was blind as a bat, but still a very sharp minded individual and still very much full of life.

I have his WW1 medals now and have had them properly mounted, polished, and cleaned.  He never wore them.  When I received them they were green with mold and had only tatters of the ribbons left on them.  They'll be proudly out on display this November 11th, right next to my Dads. 

Uncle Alf past away at his home in February 1981, a month after I visited him, aged 89.  They don’t make heroes like him anymore.

What I remember

Dad with N0.19 Radio Set

With Remembrance Day just around the corner I thought it important to mark this occasion with a non-ham radio blog entry.

My Dad was a very special guy to me, and I can’t, even now, begin to describe how I felt on the 23rd May, 1993, when he passed away. Not a day has gone by since then when I have not taken a moment each day to think about him.

He enlisted in 1942, at the age of 16, in the Royal Air Force Regiment, and after his basic training and then trade training as a signaller, he was posted to 2816 Squadron, RAF Regiment where he spent the entire war training and then fighting through North West Europe with them. Dad saw action at the D-Day Landings, Rouen, St Pol, Moerkerke, the Leopold Canal (December 1944), Damme, Grimbergenand and Woerndrecht/Deurne, where the Squadron was based during Operation 'Bodenplatte' (the Luftwaffe attack on Allied airfields on 1 January 1945). Further moves east took it to Antwerp, Ahlhorn, Hustedt and Celle, where it disbanded in June 1946. After the Squadron was disbanded he was posted to 2742 Squadron at RAF Station Ramat David in Palestine, from where he was eventually discharged in 1948. 

As far back as I can remember he regaled us all with stories about his war experiences. I suppose looking back on it now it was his way of getting therapy from some of the stuff he witnessed while overseas.

Every two years my Dad faithfully returned to the UK to attend 2816 Squadron's reunion, always held in a large pub in Glasshouse Street in London, and always well attended by its Veterans. Those of you with a military background will appreciate the humour of holding a military reunion in "Glasshouse" street! He always came home with new stories, as somebody always jogged his memory about a long forgotten event.

My Dad was not a special person, just one of a couple of million who felt it was their duty to step forward, and do something for their country at a time of great need.  Duty, was a powerful word in those days, and todays generation would do well to remember that citizenship, is not a free ride.

Of course there has to be a ham radio connection to this story....after my family immigrated to Canada in 1966 my dad became a ham, a natural thing for him to do considering his war time service as a signaller. He loved operating CW, and many an evening I remember sitting with him at the kitchen table, his SB-101 blaring 50 wpm CW at us, and him sitting there reading his library book, drinking tea, and copying the CW…all at the same time.

He was licensed in 1970 as VE7CVQ, a callsign that I now very proudly hold in his memory. That callsign only gets used three times a year these days, his birthday, the day we lost him, and Remembrance Day.

Lest we forget.



In Memory of the Officers and Men
of 2816 Squadron, RAF Regiment, 1942 - 1946
Lest We Forget

Buddies in the Caribbean

The “Buddies in the Caribbean” DXpedition group, specializing in 100 watt or less low power radios and the Buddipole portable antenna systems, will be in St Lucia (J6) on 5-13 December, 2010.

There will be 3 villa stations in operation plus daily battery-only QRP portable operations operating on 160m thru 6m, propagation permitting.

QSL via the J6/homecall of the operator (SASE), eQSL, or LOTW. For current announcements, see our website at http://sites.google.com/site/caribbeanbuddies or our daily blogsite at http://caribbeanbuddies.blogspot.com/. The website has an on-line chat feature for realtime dialog with the dxpedition team.

It's amazing how good the Buddipole system actually is.  I'm really looking forward to working Budd W7FF, and the rest of the guys, on this Dxpedition. Hopefully from somewhere were I, too, can use my Buddipole!

RAC Bulletin 2010-019E

I have just read the bulletin issued by the RAC President, Geoff Bawden VE4BAW, from the IARU Region 2 conference in El Salvador.

Amongst the pearls of wisdom Geoff wrote about was this one: "Canadians will also be interested in HF band planning in 40m (now that short wave commercial stations have left the band)......"

Er.....excuse me Mr. President...have you actually been up on 40m lately? I hate to tell you this Geoff, but 40m above 7.200 is full of Chinese, North Korean, and Spanish commercial shortwave stations operating there on a nightly basis! There is also a Chinese station that broadcasts nightly in the middle of the old CW novice portion of 40m making that part of the band almost unusable as well. These stations have not “left the band” as you put it; they have simply moved up the band a few Kcs and have continued on as before!

Looks like somebody didn’t do their homework…..or has been spending far too much time on 2m!