I think my first HF contact after I passed my CW test was most likely with VE3DID who was previous host of the OSS 20 some years ago. I remember manually tuning up the G5RV and tossing out the call VE3YBC… finally getting called in and speaking the most frequent phrase heard on HF at the time…
“Good evening Nick and all on board… Its Bob in Ottawa… and I’m looking for a (insert wanted item name here…) if you have one listed…”
Anyhow…. Today after checking the “OSS” website I see that the current Nick has decided to move the system over to an internet only system. His reason make perfect sense to me… The lower HF bands are normally CRAP…. I work W4′s andW3′s all day long on 40m but I can’t remember I worked an Ontario station that was not groundwave. Every Sunday I try to listen to the 40m net at noon and normally just hear static… Sunday evening it mostly the same thing on 80m at 1900 hrs… Bands fading… noisy as heck…. I missed more than I heard….
So today we say 73 to the crew at the OSS and thank them for all (and thank the previous crews) for all their hard work over the last 40 years and wish them well…
Every now and again a blogger will try and write “the” article… When its finished you ask yourself the key phrase “Are you sure???” To me this is one of “those” posts…
Todays posting is my personal opinion… I am not knocking our hobby… or its leaders.. I am not wishing doom and gloom on mankind so I can impress my neighbors with my radio equipment. My views on Emergency Communications have not changed and I will be ready to help if asked but I just find myself wondering if we will ever get asked and if we were could we actually do anything…. As usual comments are welcomed but please be polite… Flames and nasties will be deleted without a 2nd thought. Its my blog and my rules…
Well after many re-writes and many questions…. Here is the finished product…
For years and years now we have been told (and told others) that Amateur Radio will be there to serve the public (our neighbors) when “ all else fails…”
What this mean to me is that when it all hits the fan and the internet fails, cell phone networks fail… good old Amateur Radio will be there and ready to go. Not necessarily to save the day but to at least manage to keep a communications network in place until the regular systems can come back on line.
The term we have heard some use to describe this is a “Katrina style failure” which would refer us to what happened when Hurricane Katrina came to visit and most of the southern states were under water and massive amounts of infrastructure were destroyed…
Katrina also served the telecommunications and emergency response community by setting the bar for what they need to plan for…The planning and the communications systems are getting more robust and although this is a very good thing its also moving Amateur Radio Emergency Communication further back…
When the Island of Haiti was struck with that devastating earthquake back in January 2010 there were requests for Bilingual Radio Operators (English-French) who could supply and operate a self sufficient portable HF Amateur Radio Station to assist with Relief Operations.
But at the same time that we were looking for our passports and spare battery packs, CNN was showing reports, live reports from the effected area using their Skype phones so it seems that “All else HAD NOT failed…. Communications were possiable and were happening…
If you think back to the arrival of Hurricane Irene on August 27th-28th 2011 there were several Amateur Radio Networks running. I was monitoring safely from my home here in Ottawa to one network and was hearing information concerning WX Conditions being passed to the National Hurricane Center after I heard it being given out on a CNN weather report. Once again we were showed Reporters wading through water to get their point across but the point to me was once again the technology available was standing up to the best Irene could hand out…
The cellular systems might have been overloaded and you could have had some trouble getting a dial tone immediately but you could get out. Recently with the earthquakes in Ottawa last summer and Virginia last week there were reports of the cell services becoming overloaded but they did not fail they were just operating over their expected service levels for a while. In old phone speak “the circuits were busy…”
Text messages and emails however seemed to go through with no problems…
So today… The day after Hurricane Irene/Tropical Storm Irene visited the eastern seaboard of North America I find my self agreeing with the “When all else fails… statement”, but just wondering what it will take to make it fail because we have to design our Amateur Radio Equipment and Emergency operating procedures to be stronger than that…
Had a great time at the Lighthouse today… I operated using the Club Call of the OVMRC VE3RAM. Arrived around 0930 and was on the air from 1000 to 1230 eastern time. Managed to make 4 voice contacts on 40m and three of them were lighthouses. 2 in New York and one in New Jersey.
The Battery is charged…. The gear has been checked and packed… Found my camping chair and table…. Even found a small beach umbrella that should give me a bit of shade….
As its only a 10 min walk from my place to the lighthouse at the museum… Lots of time for coffee and breakfast before we have to leave to play radio…
Hope to hear you on the air while I am operating as VE3RAM Lighthouse CAN0016 (Cape North Old/Museum)
In preparation for our Lighthouse excursion today will be spend charging a battery pack, double checking antennas and coax and then repacking the gear and getting ready for tomorrows attempt at the lighthouse activation…
I like to empty the gear bag and repack before leaving for an event just to be sure that all the supporting toys are where they are supposed to be and in good working order… In the past I have set everything up in a park to find out I thought the coax was packed… Now what I normally do is empty the radio bag and put the battery or batteries (depending on the length of the deployment) on charge.
Once they have been fully charged I then re pack the bag with all the goodies and then I know we are good to go… Normal goodies would be a wire antenna (W3EDP if I need 80m or Par if I don’t need 80m) and my Buddistick. Several different lenghts of coax along with some inline barrell connectors so I can join them together if needed… I bring two different multitools…. A small notebook serves as my logbook, spare glasses and a couple of pens are handy as well. Radio and Tuner and Batteries are a must but as they are the heaviest items so if I can pick up the bag without straining, then its time to check to see what I forgot. In addition I also bring two 60 foot lenghts of nylon twine with a weighted end so I can get a line over the tree branch for the wire antennas…
If this was a hiking event then I would also bring my VX5 for voice comms while hiking and my VX8 for APRS. Both units clip to the shoulder straps of my backpack and the backpack would be carrying my personal gear such as sweater or windbraker, food and drink, first aid kit and a small tarp.
As Saturdays event is a short walk (10 min) from my place it makes it a lot easier. For this event I will be bringing the radio bag along with camping chair and table as there are no picnic tables where we are setting up at….
The planning makes the difference between playing radio or just taking your radio out for a walk…
Well I agree its a “bit” corny but its the best I could think of for a lead into the 2011 International Lighthouse Lightship Weekend.
This Saturday (August 20th) Michel VE3EMB and myself will be operating VE3RAM (OVMRC Club Station) from the Lighthouse at the National Museum of Science and Technology in Ottawa. Most likely there will be a few more operators showing up but so far Michel and myself are the only confirmed operators.
Heres a shot of the Lighthouse taken during Field Day 2010. Picture courtesy VE3EMB
This event is not very structured for us. I will be bringing my FT817 along with my Par End Fedz antenna along and I believe Michel will be bringing a QRO radio (100w output) so I’m also guessing he will be bringing a larger battery than mine…
The basic plan is for us to arrive around 0930 on the Saturday morning and start making contacts and having fun. Going with the assumption that the weather is going to cooperate we will give out contacts on the bands till the batteries die out. I will be operating SSB on 40m to start with then switching over to 20 m later in the day.
Hope you get a chance to work us…
Give a listen for VE3RAM CAN 0016 Cape North (old) Lighthouse
As I mentioned in the previous post I was planning to get out to a local park to set up and test out my Par End Fedz multi band QRP antenna with my FT817. I had loaned it out to a ham to use and he mentioned that the SWR was really bad on 40m… I double checked and cleaned all connections then put everything back together and headed to the park.
I had the antenna set up as a very tight sloper. To me this means that it was almost a vertical. I had been able to get the line over the next highest branch that extra 5 feet would of made it a vertical… Instead it was a sloper…
The SWR was flat in the portion of the 10m band that I normally use so that was fine… On 20 m the SWR was fine with no adjustment or tweaking needed… The confusing part was the 40m band as Jerry had mentioned that the SWR was really bad but when I used it with my FT817 the built in SWR Meter was not showing the High SWR Icon which means that the SWR was under a 3:1 and the LDG QRP Auto tuner easily matched things up.
However after reading the manual its obivious that I am going to have to shorten the antenna to get it to be close to resonating where I would like it to work on 40. I would like the antenna to be resonant around 7.150 and for this I will start to trim off one inch sections then check the meter or if I can borrow one, the SWR analyzer. Right now I am guessing I will be trimming off around 6 inches in total…
But now back to the operational side of things… Even with a bad SWR I managed a contact with N8AD Len in Erie PA. You might remember me talking about Len and his work with ECHOLINK and SKYPE setting up a remote base system. I used to use his system in the past to assist my reception of the Ontario Phone Net on the days I was NCS. Its good to hear Len on the air when a computer is not involved… On 20m up on 14.342.5 I heard WS0TA in Colorado running a pile up and I could hear most of the stations in the pile up trying to work him. However my 5w on 20m was not enough to break the pile up so WS0TA is not in the log yet…
The weekend is starting fairly strong… Got some antenna work done on the PAR, took the FT817 out for some fresh air… Spent a bit of time in the shack in the evening….
Lets see how much more radio time I can squeeze out of the weekend
Yesterday found me getting the rest of the antennas up and the coax into the shack. As of 2000 hrs Local last night the 2m and 6m loops are back on their telescopic masting and working as good as they did before with the FT 897. The VHF JPole is back on its mast and accessing all the local repeaters hooked up to the FT2400 which is filling in for the FT2900 which is still out for repair.
Attached to the FT450 is a vertical longwire (fed with a 4:1 balun) that goes up about 35 feet then hangs over a tree branch and comes back down about 35 feet. Imagine a folded vertical might be the best way to describe it or a very narrow inverted V that is end fed. In addition I have a couple of counterpoises running along the inside of the fence. So far it has rcvd average signal reports on the lower bands and I have not given it a test on the higher bands yet but hoping to do today if I can get my chores finished early enough. It seems to load up everywhere using the tuner so I am figuring it will perform its duty when called upon.
Getting close to a milestone… If you look on the right hand side of your screen right below “Bob said on Twitter” and above “Blogroll” you will find the “Blog Stats” which is the counter for the blog. I estimate that sometime on Saturday the blog will roll over the 200,000 visitor mark. I started this blog back in Feb 2008 and approx 3 and a half years later we are still going…. Not as strong as we used to…. but we are still going….. I thank you for your visits over the years….
As I mentioned earler I have to test out some antennas at home this weekend and I would also like to test out my Par ends fed multiband antenna. It was loaned out for a while and it was mentioned to me that the SWR was very high on 40m. To be honest I did not notice it the last time I used it but when I quickly put it up yesterday the swr was really bad. The antenna has not been used by me that much since I got it but it has been loaned out a couple of times… Seeing that the SWR is great on 10m and 20m but not so great (ok… really really bad…) on 15m and 40m I have a bad feeling about the coil/trap at the end of the 20m section. They say the antenna is rated for 20w and seeing as I only operated it using the FT817 and the two amateurs I loaned the antenna to are QRP Operators I don’t think anything is fried but perhaps a broken wire under the heat shrink in the trap might be it…
I’ll let you know how my efforts go….
CU over the weekend to let you know how much got done today and also to brag about the 200,000 visitor…
The following posting comes to us from our good friend VA3SIE who took over from me as the new chair of the OVMRC Special Events commitee. He has asked me to share this with you…
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Hi, Folks.
The OVMRC has sponsored a national special event prefix for the months of September and October 2011:
2011-09-01 to 2011-10-31 CF for VA, CG for VE, CH for VO, CI for VY
This special prefix celebrates the Centennial (100 years anniversary) of Parks Canada, the Worlds First National Parks Service.
