Well, life is on hold yet again...

So yesterday our Provincial Government announced another 30 day stay at home order, which means no POTA or SOTA activations from VE3 land.

Bugger!!!  It's 23C here today, under a cloudless, beautiful blue clear sky.  I even had todays POTA activation spot picked out and had done a drive by to check it out.   

It looks like the next 30 days will be spent as a hunter instead of doing the activations that were planned.  

I suppose in the long game it doesn't matter, the activation spots will still be there in a month, and hopefully then the propagation will have significantly improved over what we have had, or not had to be honest, over the past week.

Stay safe everyone, hopefully this pandemic will disappear sooner, rather than later!

The 2018 Western DXpedition...

In a previous posting I mentioned that I would be operating at night from some pretty rare grids during my trip.  This may be of interest to those of you taking part in this years ARRL International Grid Chase.

Hopefully these will be of some interest to those chasing Grids.  Some of these are in the middle of "nowhere", and probably haven't been activated in decades, if ever.  The ham population in some of these grids is zero.

I have checked the ARRL site to see if any of these grids have been activated for the Grid Chase, and most of them are shown as having zero contacts so far.  So this trip will be a good opportunity to get them on the air.

Those Grids will be:

EN96
EN78
DN99
DO50
DO11
DN19
DO42
DN89
EN09
EN49
EN86
CN78

My plan is to operate during the evening from my campsite using wire antennas and my Buddipole system.  I'll also be on battery power, so I will operate as long as the battery lasts.    I'll post a few frequencies here before the departure date in May.

Spring Plans.....

Well it's time to start planning another radio adventure!!!   In the planning stage is a trip out to the west coast following basically the same route as my last trip out in 2014.  That is, crossing the prairies using the Red Coat Trail.

It's a 1,300-Kiolometre (810 Mile) route that approximates the path taken in 1874 by the North-West Mounted Police across southern Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, in their quest to bring law and order to the Canadian West.

It's a very scenic and relaxing route that I think is far superior than the Trans-Canada Highway....mainly because of the lack of big trucks and the slow speeds on this route.  No rushing here.

Due to the early time of year I'm planning on travelling, none of the provincial parks or commercial campgrounds are open.  So, I have been having fun trying to find places to Boondock at along the way....not very easy let me tell you !!  Hopefully the RCMP know the difference between "Resting" and "Camping".

I'll be taking my portable HF radio gear with me, both QRO and QRP variants, and I'm looking forward to making some great contacts along the way, as well as some SOTA activations out in BC.....I'm also planning on setting up at a beach campsite, probably Jordon River on Vancouver Island, for a few days and working as much South Asian DX as I can get.   On the actual trip, both ways, I will be operating at night and handing out some very rare grid squares for those taking part in this years ARRL International Grid Chase.

Stay tuned for more details!!

Coming Soon........

Over the past few months a renewed push has been taking place to try to get Summits on the Air (SOTA) finally operating here in VE3 land.   This quest was started over seven years ago by Martin, VA3SIE, but was sidelined due to technicalities.   Martin is now a regional manager in the VE2 SOTA association.

This past September the SOTA management team in the UK was contacted again and they have now decided that VE3 land no longer has the technical difficulties that we had back in 2010.

For those who do not know what SOTA is, it is a ham radio operating award program that was launched in the UK in 2002, and has now grown world-wide.

The aim of SOTA is to encourage licensed ham radio operators to operate temporarily from the summits of hills and mountains....in other words get out of the shack, operate, and get some good and healthy exercise.

Now Ontario does not have a lot of true mountains, it is true that we have some high summits up in the north, but they are rather scarce in the southern part of the province.  To this end we have been told that we will be allowed to operate as a 100m prominence association, instead of the normal 150m prominence that they ask for.

Ontario will be split into four regions, corresponding to the current RAC Sections.  Thankfully we have already had volunteers step forward to manage the Greater Toronto and Ontario South regions.

More news will be posted as it happens.