Sunday 16 January 2011

NA QSO Party is over!

This years NA QSO Parties, both CW and SSB are now over.  Lots of fun, but the propagation just wasn't there.  The SFI was down to 80 with the A and K indexes not very good either for the SSB party.

There did not seem to be the participation we have seen in the past for the SSB weekend.  It seemed to start slow and never really picked up.  I did manage to work stations on 80m, 40m, 20m, and 15m, but I never heard a soul on 10m everytime I had a look around there.

One item that did work out well for me was using my second call sign - VE3FCT.  Unlike when I use VE3CLQ, VE3FCT seems to punch through phonetically.  Normally I'm asked to repeat "Charlie Lima Quebec" several times before the other operator gets it, but this did not happen using "Fox Charlie Tango".  Not once was I asked to repeat my call this time.......I may have a winner!

My Log
Time(Z) Band  Call        RST      Name    QTH
1812      40m    KJ4ADN   56/56    Bill        Axton, VA
1832      40m    K4HTA     59/59    Pat        Vienna, VA
1834      40m    W4PV      57/56    Pat        Knoxville, TN
1837      40m    NA2M      59/59    Bill        Mohegan Lake, NY
1840      40m    WA2TPU  59/59    Don       Afton, NY
1845      40m    KW3A     59/59    Steve     Springfield, PA
1913      40m    K4VV      58/58    Jack       Paeonian Springs, VA
1916      40m    KB2AMY  59/59    Evan      Westbury, NY
1919      40m    KC2SNV  58/58    Ken        Black Wood, NJ
1922      40m    KG2GL    59/59    Tony      Nutley, NJ
1925      40m    KC9CDW 59/59    Gary      Kiel, WI
1931      20m    K4AB      59/59    Tom      Hazel Green, AL
1933      20m    VE3CX    59/59    Matti      Kaministiquia, ON
1942      20m    KT4ZB    55/56    Mark      Savannah, GA
1947      20m    AG5Z     59/58    Larry      Purvis, MS
1955      15m    WA7NB  56/55    Art         Tuscon, AZ
2002      15m    WR7Q    55/55    Bob        Murray, UT
0108      40m    K9JF      59/59    Jim        Vancouver, WA
0120      40m    N1SNB   59/59    Jeff        Haverhill, MA
0135      40m    W5WMU 59/59    Pat         Lafayette, LA
0145      80m    W4YCC   59/59   Bob        Rock Hill, SC
0146      80m    VA2OP    59/59   Jay         St. Colomban, QC
0150      80m    K9CT      59/59   Al           Trivoli, IL
0152      80m    W1SJ     59/59   Mitch       Essex, VT
0155      80m    WA7NB  58/57   Art           Tucson, AZ
0201      80m    KW8N    58/59   Bob          N. Ridgeville, OH
0209      80m    K0RH     56/57   Jim          Valley Center, KS

All in all an enjoyable day.  Lets hope that the SFI starts to improve in a hurry!

Wednesday 12 January 2011

NA QSO Party

Don't forget, this weekend is the NA SSB QSO Party!  You can find the rules here.

This will be my first contest under my new call - VE3FCT, which I'll be using for contesting as the phonetics are easier to get across than CLQ......at least that's the theory!

I'll be working all bands on low power, and hopefullt the SFI will improve a wee bit for the weekend.

Hope to work you on the air this weekend!

Thursday 6 January 2011

The Fifth Annual SPAR Winter Field Day!

I'm looking forward to the 2011 Winter Field day, which is being held over the weekend of 29th/30th January.  This will be the fourth year I have taken part in this event.

Now I'm not a fan of winter, and I hate the cold with a passion....but I do believe that SPAR has it right, emergencies and disasters do not always happen in the "good months".  And it is because of this that ARES members must train and operate in less than ideal conditions.

This year six of us will be deploying to Leggat Lake, about 7 kms north of Parham (40 kms north of Kingston).  We have the use of by brother-in-laws uninsulated summer cottage, that thankfully does have an operating woodstove, and you'll find me very close to it.....if not sitting on top of it for most of the weekend. 

The rules for the SPAR Winter Field Day can be found HERE.  We plan of having three HF stations on the air - 2cw and 1 ssb. We have a 80m OCF dipole, a 20m loop, and a Buddipole system ready to go. 

Hope to work you guys on the air that weekend.

Monday 20 December 2010

The Worked All Neighbours Award

The other weekend Don, VE3MNE, and I built an 80m OCF dipole to replace my current 80m-40m-20m fan dipole. We had built several of the OCF dipoles over the past 12 months, and had used two of them, an 80m and a 160m, at Don’s cottage for field day and the IARU World Championships last summer….all with no problem. In fact this year we had the best field day score we have had in years. The plans came from the Bux Comm website.

So, on a cold Sunday (why do it in the warm weather…right?) we hauled down the fan dipole, which had given me sterling service for nearly five years, and put up the new 80m OCF dipole. It took us a while to tune it, this antenna works on 80m-40m-20m-10m and 6m, and when tuned properly can give you a 1.5:1 SWR across the bands. We could not quite get 1.5:1, but we did get close to that.

From the Bux Comm website
I fired up the rig and found that the ATU wasn’t required, and proceeded to call CQ. Well, it wasn’t too long before the XYL was in the shack complaining that I was playing hell with the TV. So, looking around to see what I had missed I found the low pass filter which I had neglected to reinstall. On went the low pass filter and off I went again calling CQ.

Within minutes I had a neighbour knocking at the front door and the XYL back in the shack, both complaining of interference with their respective TV’s. Off went the rig for the night and I sat and contemplated what the hell could be wrong.

The rig sat idle for about a week, and during that time I replaced every bit of coax in the shack with brand new pieces. On went the rig, called CQ, more complaints came from the neighbours, and off went the rig.

What to do and more to the point, what the hell is going on. We know these antennas work, and all my neighbours are on cable. Could it be the 4:1 Balun? Nope, checked that out and it works fine, and it was back to contemplating this issue for a few more days.

I had to do something fast as the RAC Winter Contest was coming up, and I needed a working antenna that wasn’t going to get me strung up by my neighbours. So, I did what any good ham would do…the damn thing came down, the old one went back up, and we’re back on the air with no complaints!

And that’s how I earned the “Worked All Neighbours Award”.

Sunday 21 November 2010

Winter Field Day

For the past 4 years the Society for the Preservation of Amateur Radio (SPAR) has sponsored an annual Winter Field Day, always held the last full weekend of January. 

Not only during Field Day in June, do the bands come alive with improvised signals proving the ability to respond to emergencies. Since emergencies and natural disasters don't always happen in the summer, during Winter Field Day, frigid winds, icy limbs and bitter cold replace the thunderstorms and blistering heat of summer. In 2007 SPAR established a Winter Field Day event and invited all Amateur Radio operators to participate. The event was repeated in 2008 and was considered a success, so it was then designated an annual event to be held the last full weekend each January. In 2007 - 2010 the event was enjoyed by many, but it is time to issue the invitation for the Fifth Annual SPAR Winter Field Day!

The 2011 Winter Field Day will be held from 1700 UCT (12:00 noon EST) Saturday January 29, 2011 through 1700 UCT (12:00 noon EST) Sunday January 30, 2011.

The object of the event is familiar to most Amateur Radio operators: set up emergency-style communications and make as many contacts as possible during the 24 hour period. The rules encourage as many contacts on as many bands and modes as possible, because during a real emergency, the most important factor is the ability to communicate, regardless of band, mode or distance.

Mark it on your calendars, it's too much fun to miss!

Friday 12 November 2010

Understanding Propagatation

Alan Melia-G3NYK and Steve Nichols-G0KYA wrote a series of feature articles for the RSGB magazine, RADCOM, these articles have now been put together into an ebook, which is available as a free download at: http://www.infotechcomms.co.uk/Understanding_LF_and_HF_propagation.pdf

The ebook explains to the reader the propagation modes behind each band and explaining some of the technicalities of ionospheric propagation It looks at the at the D, E and F layers, Sporadic E, the MUF/LUF, using solar data, propagation programs, NVIS and much more.

These two amateurs have managed to persuade the RSGB to allow me to put them together into a single document, which is now freely available for amateurs worldwide to download.

This is an excellent resource for hams, of all experience levels.  Well done to these two guys for making this happen!

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/

Tuesday 2 November 2010

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.