The following come to us from the Ottawa Citizen. If your are a radio enthuaist in the City of Ottawa I would call it required reading.
City to reassess rules for radio antennas.
Thanks to the Ottawa Citizen for the info
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UPDATED
Click HERE for the audio webcast of the planning committee…
The part on antennas start just after the 45 minute mark
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73bob
If you have some time on your hands here are some upcoming Amateur Radio events to participate in if you wish…
| Montreal Spring Fleamarket – Marche aux Puce de Montréal —
Montreal Amateur Radio Club |
222 Sprint – April 17, 2012 (Tuesday) 7-11 PM EST
The above listings were found on the West Carleton Amateur Radio Club Website. Check out their website for other great information
73bob
The following comes to my email inbox via the RAC Bulletin Service and is worth sharing with you here:
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Special Event Station – VO1AA – April, 25, 2012
The Society of Newfoundland Radio Amateurs (SONRA) will make history on April 25, 2012
April 25th each year marks the birthday of Guglielmo Marconi, who received the first wireless signal at Signal Hill, Newfoundland.
This April 25th, SONRA will celebrate the event with making an Amateur Radio contact with Princess Elettra (Marconi) who will be in Bologna Italy to celebrate her father’s birthday.
It is planned to have the Canadian Heritage Minister, the NL Premier, the City of St. John’s Mayor along with the NL Lieutenant Governor, exchange greetings with the Princess via Amateur Radio from VO1AA at Cabot Tower.
This is the first time that this event has been attempted, and it is anticipated that it will be a high level media exposure for Amateur Radio in Canada.
SONRA appreciates the wonderful relationship that it enjoys with Parks Canada, Signal Hill National Historic Site, and looks forward to many years of commemorating this important event.
73
Doug Mercer, VO1DTM/VO1DM Chief Field Services Officer – Radio Amateurs of Canada Inc
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The above comes to us from the RAC Bulletin Service. If you have any questions or comments please contact The Society of Newfoundland Radio Amateurs (SONRA) directly using the supplied link.
73bob
I found the following on the Blog of VE3GNA and felt I should share it with you…. For those of you who don’t know… Glenn is very active with the NTS side of Field Services and is the outgoing Section Traffic Manager for the Ontario Section.
Thanks to Glenn for jumping in to help out when needed.
Click on the ARES Logo to read the activation Reports
Click on the logo to go to their website
St Paul Island
This DXPedition is great for me as first of all I don’t have CY9 in the log. Secondly due to its location I stand a fairly good chance of getting them on a few bands, Located just off Cape Breton Island should give me dependable communications on 40, 80 and even a chance of 160 should they decide to operate on the top band. I will also be listening on 6m with the hopes of contacting the 6m operator Kevin VE3EN.
This DXpedition has a local flair to it as Kevin VE3EN and Steve VA3FM both hail from Eastern Ontario. When I was camping in Cornwall Ontario a few years ago I worked them on Groundwave during 2009 Field Day and I have worked Kevin on 6m from the Champlain Lookout when I was operating portable/ve2.
Its nice to be calling a DXPedition where you actually know the operators at the other end…
This is one I am really looking forward to…
73bob
I was re reading some of the info from RAC with regards to the the changes they have planned for the Ontario Section. I find the wording a bit more confusing when I read it over and over and now I find myself wondering how we can have 4 sections in Ontario with 4 section managers and only two directors. Four directors would make more sense to me. From what I could tell from an ARRL Bulletin they are going to be counting the 4 sections into contest scoring. Perhaps before we are told who has been appointed into the positions they will be giving us more information.
I guess that means when I participate in Field Day I will be changing my exchange from “ 1B ON ” to “1B EON “
Now outside of adding the three extra multis for the contests I don’t see much of an issue here as I don’t seriously contest. I don’t think it would make much of a difference as I think we have enough “serious” contesters spread around Ontario already that we should be able to work the 4 ontario sections almost as easy as we could work the single section before…. Now this is not an attack on contesting so if anyone who is a serious contester would like to nicely explain to me what I might of missed…. Please let me know…. For me the purpose of contesting is to give the serious operators some contacts…
Now something else which came to mind is that…. I know that the current Section Manager VE3AJB was acclaimed several times in the past as Section Manager for the Ontario Section. The question comes to mind is that if we only had one person dedicated enought to want to take on the position in the past… Where does RAC figure they will find three other amaters that are either willing or qualified to take on the positions?
I know that there are some good people locally in the various ARES groups but as section manager their job will be to support the FULL Field Services Organsiation and from when I was manager of the Ontario Phone Net there were not that many local EC’s or DEC’s that could bother to check into the only Province wide Traffic Net that the Ontario Section operated. Now we can debate the need for the NTS but… It is part of the Field Service Package and if you check out the ARRL website and this link should take you to an article on the ARES-NTS topic you will see that the ARRL still sees a need for NTS.
So althought I think the splitting of the Ontario is a good idea I am wondering if it was thought out well enough. I am wondering if the section has enough good people (4 Section Managers, 4 Section Emergency Coordinators, 4 Section Traffic Managers etc) to continue to do the good job that should of been done in the past.
However if the “good job” had been done in the past we probaly would not be talking about the changes being made now…
73bob
The plans for this weekend are fairly simple… Rest up… and when I feel like it try and make some contacts…
Remember the posting I made a week ago about the common cold?
Well as it turns out its not a cold… and also not common and… They called it broncitis, chest infection and ear infection… the problem is that the whole house had it… I had it the least serious so I thought it was a cold…
Anyhow… the house of sickies will survive but we all are be going to take things very easy this weekend…
At least I know why the common cold was dragging on for over 7 days now… I will get back to the blog when I feel up to i…t but as I can tweet from the tablet I might offer 140 character comments over the weekend. Check the twitter comments on the right hand side of the blog…
There probally is a moral here about going to the doctor when you feel sick…. and not figuring its something simple like a common cold… also something about being smarter than that… A smart person would learn from the error of their ways… Someone remind me about this the next time I complain about being sick…
73bob
73bob
Mark it on your callenders… Input it in your smart phones… Scribble it in your Day Planner and tie a string on your finger…
Every year (for the last 3 years now) a bunch of us from Ottawa heads up the Ottawa Valley to the now defunct CFS Foymount which used to be a cold war Radar Base. The houses are still there but everything past the gate that used to say no trepassing has been bulldozed long ago. Now there are only a couple of commercial communications towers at the top but its one heck of a place to play radio from.
The date for this years trip is Saturday March 10th…
So far we have VA2BBW, VA3SIE, VA3QV, VE3CMD as confirmed operators but no doubt there will be a few more as the regulars check their emails and for one year we actually had to coordinate frequency use we had so many rigs up there.. We actually go up to operate in the Polar Bear Club Midnight Madness Event. The event is mostly CW and also is QRP. As you know I’m not much of a CW op but I do bring a full QRP station and normally operate whereever anyone else is not interested in playing. 2m and 6m ssb is great from that high location so I can always find somewhere to toss out some RF.
Heres a write up from my March 2010 trip and heres some pictures and some more background is here.
I have operated a couple of the VHF contests there as well and always have had a blast. There will be more details including the rest of the operators as we get closer to the date but for now….
73bob
I will be first to admit that I am not a big fan of the ARES style Vests you see out there. Not a big fan of any vests to be honest… I like the idea of reflective and safety gear but I prefer the uniform style with the reflective stuff attached. I think it looks more professional and it seems that we can’t just impress them with our communnications skills any more… We have to look the part as well so…
But…
If I had to buy a vest I would seriously look at this style of vest that comes to us from VE7LAND… It could get me to chance my mind on the topic…
73bob
ps… Thanks to the BC Section Manager for mentioning this on his blog
This posting comes our way courtesy of Bill Unger VE3XT who is the RAC Director for North East Ontario. This has been just cut and pasted in from an email he sent out
Posted as a service to the Ontario Amateur Radio Community
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North East Ontario Regional Directors Report for March, 2012
Hopefully by now you will have seen the bulletins on restructuring being done in the Ontario ARES Field Organization. If you want more information please check out the RAC web pages and look for recent bulletins on the main page. Between reading the bulletin and our committee’s final report you can probably see why we needed to change our field organization and the logic for coming up with the solution we did.
All this talk about EMCOMM’s has gotten me thinking about Amateurs providing communications in the event we are needed. All professional First Responders and many Volunteer Organisations require their volunteers to have taken and passed the Incident Management System (IMS) course, IMS 100. This course was brought about after major fires in California years ago. There was confusion between various organizations regarding who was in charge, how do they communicate with each other and the logistics of getting resources, both people and hardware to the right place at the right time to name but a few.
As a result an IMS protocol was developed so that when various organizations respond to an incident the chain of command, response protocol and infrastructure is consistent. If responders are required from different jurisdictions they also are operating from the same play book. This is obviously a very simplified description of how it works but should give you an idea of what it is all about.
So what does this have to do with me as an Amateur? I am now hearing that the day may be close when anyone responding to an incident and does not have training in INS will not be allowed to help. This would include volunteers such as us.
The training is available from Emergency Management Ontario online and is free. Once you read through the instruction manual you can take the open book test online and when you pass you print out your certificate. You should be able to complete the entire course in 4 to 5 hours. Here is a link to EMO web site to get you going and I encourage you to check out the entire site as there is a lot of good information there.
http://www.emergencymanagementontario.ca/english/training/ims100/ims100.html
I am hoping and encouraging all RAC ARES members across Ontario to obtain this certification. It shows our commitment to being current and professional in our approach to EMCOMM’s.
I am still looking for a Deputy Director for the North East Region. Next time I will outline the duties of the position. Give it a thought.
Rita and I are taking a little sabbatical for a while and will be visiting family. I will have email but it could be sporadic at times so please be patient if it takes a while for me to reply.
Finally I would like to thank all of you who joined or rejoined RAC in the last month at whatever level you chose. Thanks.
If you have any questions or concerns please email me at ve3xt@rac.ca.
Bill VE3XT
North East Ontario Regional Director
Radio Amateurs of Canada
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If you have any comments or questions please contact Bill directly via email
73bob
