Lake on the Mountain

I was unable to get into this park, VE-0264, last weekend due to it being extraordinarily busy and crowded.  

It's a very strange provincial park, there's nothing there, other than a small gravel parking lot, and a viewing platform to look at the lake.

I arrived early on Thursday morning in the rain to find the parking lot empty except for a rather bored scruffy looking security guard, who immediately came over to find out what I was doing there.  Once I told him, he phoned his boss to find out if that was legal for me to do.  Yeah, the guy was on a power trip pretending he was a real cop.

The propagation that day wasn't too bad, SFI=76, SN=25, A Index=6, and the K Index=1.   The big problem I had was the extremely deep QSB and the static crashes from the lightening we had coming into the area.  I had an S5 to S7 noise floor on 40m, and a S2 noise floor on 20m.  I did not see any POTA traffic on any other band that morning.

Radio of the day was my KX3 set at 10w, and I used 40m and 20m hamsticks on a mag-mount on the roof of the van.  

In a little over an hour I made 7 contacts on 40m, 21 contacts on 20m, and I even managed to make 3 park to park contacts.  In the end I had to shut down because the lightening around me made it unsafe to stay on the air any longer.  So with 28 contacts in the log I set off on the 70 minute trip home.

Below is a screen shot of my contacts.