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!