Durham Region 5 Park Rove...

Once again it was an early morning departure for another 5 park POTA rove. All of these parks were new to me.

The parks were CA-5087 Enniskillen Conservation Area, CA-5635 Long Sault Conservation Area, CA-5638 Ganaraska Forest Conservation Area, CA-5640 Stephen's Gultch Conservation Area, and CA-Thurne Parks Conservation Area.

Three of these Conservation Areas require you to pay for parking, CA-5087, CA-5635, and CA-5640. Unfortunately when you pay for one park, the ticket isn't transferrable to the next park, even though they are operated by the same Conservation Authority. Bit of a rip off I think! There is no explanation why you don't have to pay for the other 2 parks.

The bands were in excellent condition, and I had no issues making contacts in any of the parks. Even the QSB took a day off. The propagation numbers for the day were: SFI=115, SN=61, A Index=19, and the K Index=4. I was a bit worried when I saw the K Index sitting at K4, but it didn't seem to hurt the bands at all. In fact the bands were quite busy.

Furthest DX was with Larry, F5PYI. Larry and I work quite often so it was great to get him in the log once again. But that was it, one lonely DX contact for the day. All five of the parks were activated which was a relief.

The strangest sight of the day was just north of Newcastle, in farming country. There, sitting in the front yard of a house was a Spitfire, Hurricane, and a Me109. Not the average front lawn decor!

All in all it was a good day. The drive home was down a very busy highway, which was truly the worst part of the day. But as we keep racking up our new park score the only way to do this is to travel further and further away from the home area.

There will be a few more adventures coming before the snow flies, which shouldn't be too long from now.

Stay Safe Out There!

Rideau Lakes POTA Adventure...

It was a good day yesterday so I decided very early, 0600, to pack up and hit the road for another POTA adventure. The goal was to work three, new to me, parks. 

The parks were: CA-5642 Rock Dunder, CA-5956 Perth Wildlife Reserve, and CA-0312 Murphy's Point Provincial Park. 

Rock Dunder is an interesting spot, you must pre-order a daily parking pass on line...which is a bit of a pain. The other thing there is the very narrow, tiny, single lane road that leads in and out of the park which is perched upon the side of a hill. If you meet another vehicle it's a long way to back up to the parking lot. 40m was the go-to band here, 18 in the log in 23 minutes. Not too bad considering the shape of the bands.

Next up was supposed to be CA-5957 Portland Bay Conservation Area. I purposely skipped this site as the bands were expected to get worse during the day, and I wanted to get the three new ones into the book. 

Portland Bay will be on the air on Tuesday, November 24, for the 3rd Annual VA3KS Memorial Event. It's hard to believe it's been three years since we lost our dear friend.

Instead of Portland I went straight to the Perth Wildlife Reserve, a wonderful RF quiet spot on the outskirts of Perth. Here I switched to 20m as 40m had practically died out. The best contact at the location was with Patrick, PD1CW. He was about S2 to me, and he gave me S3. Not too bad with 10w and a Hamstick. Once again this was a pay parking spot, and it's patrolled by the Rangers.

The last stop of the day was at Murphy's Point Provincial Park. The park is actually closed for the season, but you can walk in and enjoy the park, and a lone parking lot is available. The place was deserted when I got there, and I didn't see another soul the whole time I was there.

Best contacts at that location was with Rodolfo, I4RHP, and Jose, EA1BUL. It was very nice to hear European DX rolling in after a few months of quiet from the direction.

Propagation for the day was: SFI=137, SN=66, A Index=6, and the K Index=1. The QSB was very bad, and surprisingly for a weekday, the bands were actually quite crowded. We were forecasted to have a G1 Geomagnetic Storm starting around 1800 UTC....but luckily it never appeared.

That was it for the day. It was an enjoyable hour drive home through some very colourful farm land. The tree colour was fantastic. 

Stay Safe Out There!

Support Your Parks Weekend

This weekend, October 17 & 18, is this year's Support Your Park Fall Event. There will be at least 100+ parks on the air over the weekend, I'm planning on doing a couple on Saturday and Sunday.

It's +1C (34F) here this morning, but there is not a cloud in the sky so hopefully it will warm up quickly.

Get out into the parks and have some fun!!

Stay Safe Out There!

Another Day...

It was a good day today, the days are cooler and definitely getting shorter. An excellent day to get out and play POTA.

The high today was 14C (57F), and the wind was gusting up to 50km (31 mph) an hour, which made putting up an antenna an interesting experience.

Propagation didn't look that good, yet the bands were excellent. Today's numbers were: SFI=114, SN=92, A Index=6, and the K Index=2.There was a small amount of QSB about but it didn't cause too many issues.

First up out of 29 stations today was Josh VE3YTX, with a P2P with CA-5359. Once again absolutely no DX was worked, although I did hear a EA1 calling me, but I couldn't get his whole call as he was so far into my noise floor,  so unfortunately he didn't make it into my log.

Radio today was my KX3 set at 10w, and a 40m and 20m Hamstick as antennas. This pairing works so well for me I don't see a need to change it. Although, as we enter the time of diminished band conditions I might have to re-think the Hamsticks.

Here's todays contact map:

Stay Safe Out There!!

Thanks Bas!!!!

Warning......this is not really about amateur radio.....

There has been a bit of a WW2 mystery in my family for a couple of years that we have been unable to figure out. But thanks to a fellow ham, we now have the answer!

The mystery was a picture that was sent to me when I was doing some research into my father's WW2 RAF Regiment Squadron. Here's what I knew: the picture was taken in November 1944, and it's somewhere in the Netherlands. Here's the picture:

What was interesting to me, when this photograph arrived is the fact my Dad is in the picture. He's the Corporal on the left side of the picture with Flying Officer Norman Page MC. My Dad was Norman Page's signaller, and served with him in No. 4 Flight, 2816 Squadron. The armoured car, and the other airmen, were with 2777 Squadron. Both of these Squadrons worked together in 1313 Wing of the RAF Regiment.

I knew from stories my Dad had told me that they were in the Netherlands searching for V2 rocket launch sites, Luftwaffe control centres, radar stations, and weapons stores.

Middelburg was liberated from the Germans on the 6th November, 1944. 

As you can see from the picture there is no detail about where it was taken. The road sign gives us a few clues, but to somebody who's never been to the Netherlands, there's not much to go on.

I tried for quite a while to try and figure out using the distances shown on the road sign, all with no luck. In the end I had the bright idea to contact a fellow ham radio operator in the Netherlands, Bas, PE4BAS. I sent the picture to Bas and asked him if he had any idea where this might be.  The answer arrived within 10 minutes, it was Middelburg, The Netherlands. Now we knew!

By the time I had composed an email thanking Bas for the information, he had already sent another email, this time with a modern picture.  Here's the picture Bas sent:

You will notice the same two building in the background of both pictures. Absolute proof it is the town of Middelburg. 

So this mystery is now solved thanks to Bas. I can't thank him enough for helping with this, I would never have figured it out by myself. 

Middelburg, The Netherlands.

A picture of the Humber Armoured Cars of 2777 Squadron in the same location
on the same day.

Bedankt voor je hulp, Bas. Ik waardeer het enorm!

Stay Safe Out There!

Three Parks, a suit, and a Wedding...

It was 6C (43F) on Sunday morning and I had an outdoor wedding to go to, the afternoon high was forecast to be 15C (59F). I really wasn't looking forward to going, I'm not a big fan of large, noisy, gatherings....they tend to set off my anxiety disorder, but it was my niece who was getting married, so I was going.

My wife and I were going in separate vehicles as she was spending the night and I was returning home that evening.  It was on my way out the door that I realized that I would be passing by my favourite POTA 3fer, Portland Bay Conservation Area. Hmmm.......could I pull it off?

The propagation numbers didn't look very good at all, and I knew there wouldn't be a lot of time to get the activation done. So off I went.

It takes an hour to get to Portland Bay, it's about half way to my wedding destination. I decided to try 40m as it looked the busiest on cw. The noise floor on 40m was around S6 but you could still hear a few signals getting through.

First up was Max K1SN, in Virginia. The furthest station worked was Tom KG1A in Florida. It took a little over thirty minutes to get the 10 stations in my log, and then it was off to the wedding. That's the first time I've ever done an activation in a suit and tie.....it's probably the last time as well as it was pretty uncomfortable.

I don't recommend telling your XYL you did this, you may get dragged out to more weddings as a punishment............did I mention the next wedding is next weekend?

Stay Safe Out There!! 

2026 Chillycon.....the Rest of the Story...

This was the 20th year we have held Chillycon, and my 17th time I've attended...and this year's Chillycon is a wrap.  

It was "cool". Thursday and Friday were great, but Saturday and Sunday morning were sitting at around 4 to 5 degrees, but we had a great time. The park was a lot quieter than it had been in the past few years, less screaming kids, and many empty sites which was a good thing for us. AND.....we had no rain at all.

We had 8 sites occupied and 10 hams there for the week. Saturday saw a pile of guys arrive for the day to operate, and we ended up having 18 for Pizza dinner that night. Don VE3MNE won the SSB DX Trophy with a contact into Namibia, and the CW trophy was won with a contact into Turkey by Tom VA2NW. The bands, however, were really not very good, very noisy and full of RF crashes. I did manage a CW contact into France and a SSB contact into Sweden, but that's all the DX I got in 5 days!!

I managed to do 10 POTA activations, only 1 new one, Hog's Back Park in Ottawa....a really nice place to operate from. I had also planned on operating from the Central Experimental Farm, but there was no parking and the place was a total construction site.

I also managed an activation at the Rideau Migratory Bird Sanctuary in Merrickville. What a change there! The location we used to go to, down the road by the picnic tables, is now fenced off and is being made into a huge dog park. If you go there to activate the only parking is now at the Library. I also activated the Block House NHS and found no issues parking there for a change.

Here's some photo's from the weekend....

My new tent, very comfortable and roomy.

The portable shack for the week.

The most important item....the portable bar!!

Stay Safe Out There!!

EFRW QRP antenna...

The EFRW QRP antenna long wire with 4:1 Balun that I received from Tuftein was tested this past weekend at Chillycon.

It was used for SSB and CW on several bands, both for hunting stations as well as calling CQ. No DX was worked with it, but stations in Texas and Georgia were.

The first thing I noticed was that the "Q" of the antenna was very narrow, making it necessary to retune the antenna every few kc. I don't have to do that with my Rybakov, so I'm at a bit of a loss why I have to do it with this EFRW.

The other thing I find very strange about this antenna is the fact it comes with a built in 4:1 unun. EFRW's normally use a 9:1 unun. So from that point of view it's a wee bit strange.

It's very well built, no doubt about that. But it certainly didn't perform for me as I was expecting it to. I believe this antenna should be redesigned and a 9:1 unun used instead of the 4:1, which I think would make it much better.

This antenna will be put away, and I will stick to using my Rybakov in the future.

Stay Safe Out There!!

Chillicon....this weekend!...

This coming weekend is the 20th running of the annual Chillycon event, the annual gathering of Eastern Ontario QRP'ers and POTAaholics.

As usual the event will be held at Rideau River Provincial Park, across the river from Kemptville.

Feel free to drop in on Saturday if you're in the neighborhood. There will be lots of different QRP radios in action as well as lots of antenna experimentation.  

I'm finally going to be able to test out the EFRW QRP antenna long wire with 4:1 Balun from Tuftein. I can't wait to see how it performs in the crappy propagation we have forecast for the weekend. Look for a report on that antenna next week.

Stay Safe Out There!!

Three Lost Events...

It seems every time I turn on the computer lately yet another thing has disappeared from the ham radio world. Last week it was CANParks, only 2 weeks after it had been started, it quietly closed down. CANParks, in those two weeks had gained 500 operators, all sending in logs, and enjoying the idea that anything called a "Park" could be assigned a park number and activated.

Yesterday I discovered that both QRP Afield and QRP to the Field had decided to stop their contests. To show you how quietly these shut down, QRP Afield didn't even post a comment on the fact there would be no further contests until after the 2025 event when hams sent in logs, only to be told there was no contest that year and wouldn't be any in the future. I was told the uploaded logs simply went into the garbage can.

QRP to the Field at least posted after the 2026 contest that this would be the last year the contest would be held. Low participation numbers was one of the excuses mentioned, as well as the proliferation of POTA and State/Provincial QSO Parties which now offered a QRP category.

I think the issue here is the fact that neither QRP Afield, or QRP to the Field, had any social media footprint. No Facebook, YouTube Channel, Twitter account, Instagram, or even a Groups.io site. How do you let hams know these niche contests exist if there is no way of getting the word out, other than a couple of very tired looking websites that maybe get updated every third year or so?

I'm equally surprised that no other QRP Club has stepped forward and offered to take over these two contests. With a good, solid, social media presence and a modern website, those two events could be made to be viable again. One only has to look at the way Winter Field Day took off after their modern website was built, and they added a Facebook site as well. 

Any Takers??

Stay Safe Out There!!