Sunday at the Lighthouse

On a positive note.....it didn't rain!  It was very cool though, the high was only +8C and there was a pretty good breeze down by the water to make it feel real cold.  Shades of winter days to come!  After the summer we have had it is very hard to start thinking of how to dress for the cooler weather. 

Rig of the day was the IC-703 and the antenna was the "Chilicon Special Mk 2".  Once again this setup did a great job.  We made a good number of contacts, from N6O in Santa Barbara, California, to DL/PS3LPG in Weeze, Germany, and a ton of others in between them.

What is amazing is that I was kind if lazy today and I only put out two 33' radials, not the usual small forest of wire that is usually strewn about the ground, and to be honest I didn't notice any difference in antenna performance. 

Today Larissa-VE3KGC came along with us.  Larissa is a fairly new ham, and today we had her on the air with her "new" Ten-Tec Scout.  It's a really nice little rig and it performed very well today.  This was the first time I have seen this rig in action and I was impressed with it. 

The numbers were not very impressive today, we had: SFI-98; A Index-6; K Index-1; and the SN-39.  We certainly seen a lot better over the past few weeks. 

Oh well, hopefully it will get better for next Sunday when I'm going to give George-VE3SIQ a hand attempting to activate, for the second time, Brewer's Mill Island.  Hopefuly this time we will get the required 26 QSO's.  I'm starting to like this moving houses, it gives me another excuse to get out, decompress and play radio.