What a great day !!

The SSB Station looking over the water towards Kingston

The day started off not so well........as I backed out of the garage heading to the clubs Sunday breakfast it was raining quite heavily.  Thankfully that only lasted about 15 minutes and then it started to brighten up a bit.

By the time we left the restaurant it was cloudy but really humid, and it was to stay that way for most of the day.  The ferry ride over to Wolfe Island, ON-009, was uneventful.....smooth sailing all the way for the 30 minute trip.

The propagation numbers for the day left a lot to be desired:  SFI=87, SN=31, A Index=14, and the K Index=2 at 1420 UTC.

For this activation we chose to set up at the winter ferry dock, about five km from town.  This dock is only used during the winter or other periods of low water, and is a quiet spot that nobody goes near when it's not in use.  The rest of the year the ferry arrives at the main dock near the centre of the small village of Marysville.

We had two stations on the air, both using the clubs VE3FRG callsign.  One was on SSB and the other was a digital station.  We had three other operators besides myself out for this activation, Dave VE3DZE, Brian VA3BAH, and Rick VE3ORY.

The digital station was not very successful, but the SSB station made a total of 74 contacts, of which only three were Canadian, the rest were all from the USA.  Most of the contacts were made on 20m, the other bands we expected to use were useless due to the poor propagation.

The winter ferry dock has definite possibilities for future use as it's very RF quiet there.  All in all it as a good day, a little humid perhaps, but any day outside playing radio is a good one!

VE3DZE and VA3BAH hanging around at the Digital station