Did the RAC President resign?

Now heres a topic we have not had to look at since Febuary 25th of this year when I commented that we had an announcement from RAC that Bob Cooke VE3BDB had been appointed president of Radio Amateurs of Canada to fill the remainder of the term of Dave Goodwin VO1AU who had resigned.

Yesterday afternoon there were rumors floating around along with  a couple of emails stating that the current president Bob Cooke VE3BDB had resigned.  Now there has not been anything official from RAC HQ or the RAC Blog (as of 1300 eastern) but if you go to their website the position of President is listed as vacant.

I’m not sure on what happened and I don’t like to speculate on emails received that could be easily edited so….my comments are based only on the fact that in less than one year we have had two presidents resign.  Being a member of RAC it does not fill me with confidence because we need stability in our national organisation at this time.  Getting another new president when the last two presidents were very capable (my opinion) makes me very nervous.

I wish the incoming president (whoever her/she is) the best of luck with the honest feeling that they are going to need it.

73bob

More on Nov 14th SOTA

The long range WX for the Mont Ste Marie area is not looking that bad.  If you follow this link.  It looks like snow will not be an issue but that also most likely means that the lift will not be operating as with no snow = no skiers!

Now in additon the guys seem to be making commercials for the event and posting them on YOU TUBE.

I saw a short one from Goathiker of “Rooster and Peanut Fame” but the video of the day will feature Canadian Content as its from the VE2SOTA Group.

I am amazed of the quality of most of these videos.  They sure make my Survivorham Vidoes look rather bush league to say the least.

Looking forward to the November 14th event but not sure if I will be chasing for being chased…

73bob

SOTA Nov 14 Update

Well it seems VA3SIE Martin and myself are on the same page and the hill he was thinking of climbing was the same one I am wondering if I can climb.

Pictures  courtesy of Mont Ste Marie website

We would be starting in the Parking lot on the far right of the picture and heading left for a short distance before heading up to the top of Cheval Blanc which is translated into White Horse.  From my younger days I seem to remember this being one HECK of a steep climb so I am hoping the chair lift is in opertation for this one.

To be honest I don’t really think I have the legs, endurance and heart rate for this one so my participation in this one is very questionable but I do wish Martin all the best.

If we could guaranteee the ride up and back…(chair lift) then it would be great but….

73bob

 

How does the new law honestly affect you?

That is our question of the day…  How does the new Ontario Driving while Distracted law help or hamper your daily amateur activities??  Or how do you see it helping or hampering your planned amateur activities?

Before we go much further lets get one thing straight….  The Province of Ontario is not telling you when and where you can play with your radios (so lets hear none of the ususal we are federally regulated and they have no rights bull crap) as we heard when the tower issues come to mind.  They are telling what we can do when we are driving a motor vehicle and as that comes under provincal regs they can…  and they have…  end of story!

In a nutshell they have regulated (dictated) that in Ontario you will not operate a motor vehicle while distracted.  The distractions are mostly (but not limited to) handheld wireless devices (like cell phones) and when we pressed for definations along with other special interest groups (trucking industry, courier industy) we find out that now they include really anything that you can hold in your hands while driving.  Wired or handheld devices for the most part are on that “thou shalt not” list. To be fair we have been given a 3 year exemption for amateur radio style devices (and the truckers have been given the same exemption for their CBs and the couriers for their private commercal radio) so that new technologies can be brought in to let us use our devices.

For the most part the intended targes which are Cell Phones/Blackberries/PDAs and other handheld devices are already capable of handsfree operations.

At this point in my blog posting I am now going to restrict my comments back to the amateur side of things again…

We have been given 3 years to get things up to speed.  It could of been worse but as we know it could of been better.  Several other provinces have given exemptions to amateurs but Ontario did not see fit to do that.  Thats another topic for another day however.

The bottom line is that outside of really bugging you because the goverment is now telling you what you can’t do there is NO CHANGE to your daily routine.  You can still operate your radio although it might be handy to find the wallet copy of your certificate handy to prove to the officer that your an amateur radio opertor.  You have 3 years to get the technology needed to modify your radio to comply with the law.

At this point I will warn you that you as an amateur radio operator are exempt, but not untouchable.  If the officer feels (yes thats in his opinion) that while you were operating your amateur radio device it was causing you to opertate your motor vehicle in an unsafe manner you could be charged with some form of dangerous driving.

Before you start hollering…  This is nothing new…   They could of done it before….

You are still expected to drive safely…

The worse case senario would be that we have 3 years to buy new toys for our cars and thats a bad thing????  They are giving us an excuse to upgrade…

So we have 3 years where we should be driving safely proving to the regulators that we are all playing nice and our exemption should continue because in the last 3 years there was no examples of amateur radio operators being involved in any incidents that could be traced back to their radio operations. RIGHT!!!!

Today there is no change…  I looked at the APRS.FI site and still see mobile zipping across the province.  Hearing several operators conducting mobile operations as I type this both on HF and on the local repeaters…  By driving safely they are helping us gather the statistics needed to attempt to convice our leglisators that we deserve a further exemption after 2013….

Lets be careful out there….

73bob

 

 

Be careful if you go out to Play Radio

Now to be honest the following link from CBC is not really what I would concider “Amateur Radio Releated”.  But given the fact that this is the time of the year I enjoy getting out most often into the parks and forests to play radio it could serve as a wake up call.

Cooler weather bring out less bugs and less visitors but there is a chance of 4 legged critters visiting as well.  If you read the papers from the “Greater Ottawa Area” you have heard the words “Coyote attack” already this year in reference to a few small dogs vanishing from Ottawa’s Rural Areas.  Check here for that story

 

If you are planning to go outside to play radio keep this in mind and be careful out there.

73bob

CBC News – Nova Scotia – Coyotes kill Toronto singer in Cape Breton.

Upcoming SOTA Activation

In todays email comes this very interesting email from my old “DXPediton/Special Event Partner “Martin VA3SIE.  Martin and myself in our younger days participated in two Canadian Island on the Air events with successful intital activations of ON 277 Maple Island and ON283 Bate Island along with participating in the 2009 FYBO Contest from Vincent Massey Park in Feb 2009 as CF3RCS. (Canadians Freezing 3 Real Cold Spot)

Now guess what he has planned….

Hi.

 

Weather permitting (ie. not if we get heavy snow or freezing rain), I plan to hike to the summit of Mont Ste. Marie and activate it for SOTA and for the QRP Polar Bears. (If the chairlift is running I’ll take advantage of that for sure but I’m not counting on it).

http://ve2sota. radioamateur. ca/

http://www.n3epa. org/Pages/ PolarBear. htm

The plan is to be on the air around 11am and stay until around 3pm.

If anyone would like to join me for the hike, I’d love the company.

http://tinyurl. com/ykgnyu9

I will be operating HF QRP CW around 14062kHz, 10115kHz, between 7030kHz and 7040kHz and 3560kHz.

I will be trackable on APRS at:

http://aprs. fi/?call= VA3SIE-7

And I will beacon my status and HF operating frequency.

I can also be contacted on the VE2REH repeater (which happens to be on the same summit). It’s IRLP on node 2018 or echlink
at node 198724 (VE2REH-R).

Send me an email if you’re interested in joining me!

va3sie@gmail. com

73
Martin.

Now this sounds like a blast and I do have the equipment….Radio Equipment at least to do the trip…  FT 817…  good battery pack… multi band hf antenna…6m portable antenna… 2m portable antenna…  all fitting into a backpack…   CHECK…

Lets see now…Strong Legs….  Strong Back…  Endurance…   Strong Heart…  I can think of 4 reasons right off the bat….  Its time to do some walking wearing the loaded pack and see how good or bad I do…  I got 3 weeks to figure out if I can go or not…  However we could use the radio to contact the rescue helo if I go…

More on this later….

73bob

Spinning the dial

Today (this afternoon) I decided to dust off the FT 817 (Yaesu FT 817 QRP Rig with 5W of RAW POWER)

and hooked it into my W3EDP antenna using the FT 817′s QRP Autotuner and decided to see what was out there.

Picture courtesy VE3WEH Larry Wilcox

Well to be honest I heard plenty.  I heard South Africa on 20m and lots of US Stations on 40m but 80m was not cooperating today.

Although the band was good (best I’ve heard in a while) I was unable to work the South African Station ZS6CCY but did he ever have a great signal.

Try as I might I could not get him to hear  the words “VA3QV QRP” but he did hear one QRP Station in W8land from the states so at least someone got him at QRP Power levels…

I had a good solid contact into ERIE PA with Len N8AD who you have heard me mention before as one of the system operators of the ECHOLINK Remote HF RCVR I use when the noise levels are too high here in Ottawa.  Since my purchase of the Timewave ANC-4 I have been doing less ECHOLINK but every now and again its good to know the remote receivers are still out there.

So today I was one out of two in the QRP Contacts department but it was fun to dust off some radio gear that had not been used since the Lighthouse event back in mid August.

73bob

CBC News – Toronto – Cellphone ban begins for Ontario drivers

Now it appears to be happening.  I’m still confused…Everything I read about this well thought out bill mentions Cell Phones and Texting….  We somehow got caught up into things when we started asking for definations etc…  Did we do it to ourselves???   When did a microphone suddenly become a distraction although it is a handheld device…

73bob

CBC News – Toronto – Cellphone ban begins for Ontario drivers.

Not exactly as planned…..

…But fun anyway

My participation in the contest did not go exactly as planned but I did meet a few of my previously mentioned goals…

Work all of Canada

Well this did not happen but I was able to work VE7 on 20m and loads of  VE3 and VE2 on 40, 80 and 160m.

Work at least 25 states

Not even close but I did manage 10 states and two of them were on 160m

Work at least 3 continents

DONE!!! North America, South America and Europe all in the log with no problems.  One callsign might of been in ASIA for the 4th continent but I’m not sure on the way he was signing.  He also gave his zone as “20″ and by my map zone 20 is in Asia but as I don’t keep score its only an iternal style goal

North America, South America and Europe are normally givens… Africa is a possibility anything else would be fantastic

Have Fun

ALSO DONE!!!! I had a blast and made lots of contacts…  Unfortunately on Saturday and today I am recovering from some sort of bug which knocked me flat on Saturday afternoon and I am still feeling the effects…  If I had more time behind the mich I might of met more of the goals but…  Its only a hobby

Normally also a given…  This is a hobby and hobbys are supposed to be fun…  I enter this contest with the knowledge that I am not going to win…  that I am going to make a contact with someone that will win… and therefore my purpose in being in the contest is to give out contacts, test out my radio gear, meet as many of my goals as I can and mostly to have fun.

So Exactly how bad or good did I do…

Well the log is nothing to write home about but HRD does make the logging easier than the old pen and paper method but today it might not of been needed…

160m — 6 contacts—2 zones—1 province and 3 states

80m –12 contacts—2 zones— 2 provinces and  4 states

40m–8 contacts— 3 zones—0 provinces and 6 states

20m— 3 contacts—2 zones— 1 province and 2 states

15m— 15 contacts—10 zones—8 countries

So as you can see no records were set but inbetween trips (refer back to the bug comments) I tried to make contacts and have fun.

The Log shows approx 3 hours of radio time in 3 one hour spurts for this event.  Better than nothing and I had fun…

The W3EDP worked great….  The Timewave ANC4 worked great on the low bands…. I’m still not a hardcore contester and to be honest I never will be but I do enjoy getting out there and giving out some contacts…

Memorable event of the event….  Listening to K3LR running on 80m on Sunday morning and giving up the frequency to a local net that runs every Sunday moning.

Shows a lot of class…

73bob

Sometimes they come back…

One of the nicer things about Amateur Radio is that when a friend leaves you can still stay in touch rather easily.  In the past I have mentioned that VE3SBC Steve headed east to Halifax NS and became VE1SBC.  Steve was a very active amateur in Ottawa and was greatly missed.

We also lost VE3DLJ Doug who headed out to Yorkton Saskatchewan and became VE5DLJ.  Doug fell into the same catagory as Steve being that if you needed a body to give you a hand that Doug would jump in and offer before asked.

Well today I am pleased to report that Yorkton’s loss is Ottawa’s gain as last night I found out that VE5DLJ is back to being VE3DLJ and has moved back to Ottawa.  In true “Doug” fashion he has jumped right in and ended up as the chair of radio operations for the Ottawa Valley Mobile Radio Club. This means he is now the net manager of two VHF Nets and one HF Net.

In additon to having to get settled in back in town he has to set up and run three amateur nets…

Welcome back Doug…

73bob