This morning I was picked up by Jose VA3PCJ and we headed out to the Long Island Lock Station (Rideau River south of Ottawa and North of Manotick) to check out a potential operating locations for a planned CISA activation of Nicholls Island and Long Island which might occur later in the year or in the spring of 2012.
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If you zoom in a bit you will see Nicholls Island and below that Long Island. Today we operated from the small park area just beside the bridge before you would go onto Nicholls Island.
The areas both looked promising and I am looking forward to giving a serious effort from both locations in the future.
Once we had scoped out the neighborhood we decided to set up my Yaesu FT817 (Par ends fed QRP Antenna) and Jose’s IC703 (Buddipole Antenna) on the land side of the Lock station as the picnic tables were still out there and we could park fairly close to where we were operating from. The Picnic tables on both islands had been removed for the season…
Beside the picnic table I set up on was a large tree and I was able to get the weighted line over the branch at about the 40 foot mark and so set up my antenna as an almost vertical sloper with a very slight slope to the south. Jose set up his Buddipole as a horizontal dipole on a 10 foot (I think) telescopic pole.
My first contact was with NB9QV (nice call) who was operating a special events station on 14.257 usb from Manotoc Wisconsin. He was operating from the USS Cobia. Check them out on QRZ for more info
Next on 20m was KA3UNK who was operating portable from the Kent Island Lighthouse. After that contact I knocked off another Lighhouse with K2G on 7.180 who was operating the Fire Island Lighthouse. K2G was also operating in support of the US Coast Guard. We have worked the Fire Island Light before in the Lightships event.
After spinning the dial way down on 40m I managed to hear some strange noises on 7.065. These were the sounds of an ARES exercise being conducted by the Loyalist District of Ontario ARES. As I am active with the local ARES group here in Ottawa I quickly check in and then as they had no traffic for the Greater Ottawa Area I was excused and then continued on with the fun… Just incase some of you are not familure with Industry Canada Rules and Regs Canadian Amateurs do have voice privledges in the lower end of 40m so at 7.065 we were in band so to speak…
From the ARES exercise I decided to spin back up and found K2FR on 7.225lsb . He was activating W2 GC 002 which is Hunter Mountain in the Catskills for SOTA so I managed a SOTA contact without even trying. He had an excellent signal and the contact was made just before he tore down for the trip back down the mountain.
Above Andy K2FR at the summit
After that I jumped back to 20m and managed to get Special Event Station N3B who was operating from the US Coast Guard station in Baltimore MD. Both K2G and N3B were special event stations operating in honor of the United States Coast Guard 75th anniversary.
The suprise contact of the day occured just after while spinning the dial up I happened to hear GB4ROC on 20m. The suprise of this contact was that I had already worked this station from home this am before Jose and I had left for the field. So I got them from home with 100w and I also got them from the Lock station with 5w.
After sitting at a picnic table for 2 hours beside the water, in the cold and the wind was blowing we decided that we had had enough fun for one day… We packed up and headed over to a local coffee shop to warm up and discuss what we did good and what we could do better… It was a great day…
73bob
Tags: amateur radio, Amateur Radio Portable Ops, Long Island Lock Station
January 24, 2012 at 9:21 pm |
[...] 23rd (a Sunday afternoon ) while I was sitting in the shack blogging about the fun I had out at the Long Island Lock station with Jose VA3PCJ on the Saturday, I managed a contact with W9W who was operating from US Island WI048R in [...]