If you can read this… Thank A Teacher…
If you read this in English… Thank a Veteran!
“Lest we forget…”
.
This morning Mark VA3UMP, Jose VA3PCJ and myself headed out on a cold morning to try and warm up the atmosphere with RF.
To be honest with the CQ WW SSB contest going on I don’t really think the extra 3 stations made any difference what so ever… But despite the cold we did have some fun…
We had previously decided on heading out to Rockcliffe Park…
It would be that big green area to the left of the “A”
Mark arrived about a 1/2 hour before we did and set up his Yaesu FT897 along with a full size (6m to 160m) Carolina Windom. With a total length of over 200 feet it was a good thing the park was empty…
Jose and myself arrived around 0930 and I set up my W3EDP along with the FT 817/LDG Tuner combo and Jose used his IC703 along with his Buddipole.
In my case things were working fairly well. I was receiving signals from all over. Europe, Africa and all over North America… Stations were heard on 15, 20, 40 and 80m and all of them had very strong signals…
It was like a giant Pile UP and unfortunately my meager 5w output was not enough to break any pile ups so after 2 hours of calling CQ I was shut out. There were a few local stations I could of worked but I was hoping for something a bit more rare than Ottawa East…
Above- Mark VA3UMP
Mark was operating 40m CW and SSB. I believe he got a few contacts in as well… He had dialed the power down so he was operating QRP as well…
Jose seemed to be the DXer today with the Buddipole making more than a few contacts with 15m SSB being the best band…
Jose sent me his logs via email…
checked my contacts of this morning in QRZ.com (all SSB using 5W):
EI2II (Ireland)
Above Jose VA3PCJ
On Wednesday past, my Ft817 and a Buddistick had good luck from Mooneys Bay Park and now on Saturday Jose and his IC703 and a Buddipole also had good results… I guess its true that Bud W3FF makes good antennas…
Buddipole Antenna of VA3PCJ
I was questioning my sanity however as my fingers were slowly going numb while operating… Last night at the start of the contest my home station with 100w was not breaking any pile ups… I was really wondering what ever gave me the idea that 5w would do an better in a park… A very cold park…
I guess I needed to have more faith and the propagation Ghod punished me by smiling on Jose instead… No matter what it was fun… We were joined in the park by Harold VA3UNK (camera shy) who showed up to loan moral support and laff at 3 guys not smart enough to stay inside on a cold day… He showed up… Change that to 4 guys…
A couple of hours after we arrived it was time to Tear Down and Pack up… While we were packing up the vehicles Ante VA2BBW showed up for a visit. We had decided to head over to “Timmies” for Lunch but Mark had to head home for previously made plans.
Jose, Ante, Harold and myself headed over to “Timmies”…
“What do you get when you put a SAR guy and a Sailor at the same table???”
You get a really interesting discussion on GPS units… I learned more in that hour about GPS than I ever knew before…
And I think they both have forgotten more about GPS units than I ever knew…
After that we all went our ways… I headed home to do some stuff here on the blog and then worked on finding out which of my patchcords are due for replacement or repair…
Its snowing here lightly in the City so I’m not sure what will happen tomorrow… I was thinking of a local park but now I only thinking of warm…
73bob
May 15, 2011 at 3:51 am |
[...] I was lucky enough to work both of the club stations and all four (other) rovers. I heard José VA3PCJ but he was very weak and despite calling several times I could not get him in the log from ward [...]