Sorry guys… this is a large post with lots of pictures but… They say a picture is worth a thousand words so its better I post the pictures
bob
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Although I did participate in the Ontario QSO Party this year (2012) my plan was kind of not the best… Instead of trying for a good score I decided that I would enjoy myself and give out lots of contacts (or at least as many as I could) As you may or may not know the Ontario QSO Party is run over a two day period with 8 hours off in the middle so you can rest up… It runs from 2pm EDST to Midnite EDST then returns at 8am EDST to its conclusion at 2pm EDST…
For those of you who speak UTC thats 1800z to o500z for the first session then 1200z to 1800z for the final session.
The first year I participated in this event I was part of the Ottawa Valley Mobile Radio Clubs (VE3RAM) multi/multi event and we had a good time and actually won some walpaper for the club that year.
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We operated using the club trailer and were set up as a living exhibit at the Science Museum in Ottawa. That was the last year that the contest ran straight through and from then on its been a split contest… Both styles have their merits…
Running straight through allows a group thats operating portable to run for the duration without having anyone having to babysit the site with nothing going on…
Splitting into two sessions allows Rovers to take the time to stop and charge their batteries for both the gear and themselves and makes it easier for people to operate as they no longer have to be sleep deprived to get a decent score…
So now we seem to have lots of rovers but not so many Field Day Style stations…. oh well… There was a little bit of chatter a while back about adding a portable station catagory that would operate for one (not both) of the sessions allowing people to head to a rare county to operate from but not have any dead time on the overnites… The rules for this would or could be close to the rules for the Hill topper catagory in the CQ WW VHF Contests… Unfortunately the addition of the catagory never happened which brings us back to today…
This year 3 of us decided that it was time for a QRP Day trip. In all honesty about 7 of us decided but we lost a few along the way and 3 of us ended up making the trip…
Figuring on wanting the best chance to make contacts we decided to head out for the Saturday session of the Ontario QSO Party to Foymount Ontario and operate from whats left of the old Radar Base.
Saturday am Tom VA2EPR, Jose VA3PCJ and myself loaded up Jose’s Jeep and we headed out to Foymount with various antennas and a Pair of Yaesu FT817s and an ICOM IC 703 as we were going to operate QRP Portable for the Ontario QSO Party.
The travel plans called for us to leave Ottawa around 9am and with a meal stop planned in Renfrew Ontario we would arrive at Foymount around noon which would give us 2 hours to get the antennas up and be on the air for the start of the contest at 1400…
Unloading in a snowstorm
Picture courtesy VA3PCJ
Well we did arrive on schedule but the weather had turned nasty. For the details on the Weather see my previous post. It was windy and it was cold…. There was a dampness in the air but to make matters worse we kept on getting hit with snow squalls and there is not that much shelter where we were forced to operate from…
Picture courtesy VA3PCJ
Picture courtesy VA3PCJ
The term “Forced to” is a bit misleading but the area has changes slightly from the last time (March 2011) I had operated from Foymount. Most notable and also visiable are the “NO TRESPASSING” signs that are put up in certain areas. It did cut down on the operating area for the event. By my views… you can still operate up there but the best locations are now for whatever reason “off limits”
If you take a look at the below picture where the Orange Dots showed the approximate locations of where we planned to operate from only the one on the right hand side is still accessable without entering an area without a No Trespassing Sign
Picture courtesy VA3PCJ
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Here is a modified picture that shows where you can and can’t go from the way I look at the way the signs are placed. Not sure what the official site plan says so its a operate at your own risk…
The above viewing is based on my opinons given the placement of the No Trespassing Signs on Saturday April 21st.
You do still have one fairly good location to put up a mast for some vhf beams and a HF vertical but there are no trees to help with dipoles or wires and so we are now fairly limited on what we can do up there without trespassing.
Granted when we were there we saw no signs of enforcement and they would have had to go past us to check the other areas but… It does hamper ones choices of where to operate…
I hate to harp on the topic but… You operate there at your own risk… We got away with it and might of been lucky or been in the right place that was allowed…
But now back to the Giving out contacts part… Realizing that we would not be able to participate for even the full time of the Saturday part of the contest due to the fact that the temps really start to drop up there once the sun goes down we had hoped to operate from 2pm to about 6pm or so… To give out the maximum contacts we had agreed to operate as 3 Single Operators and share the frequencies rather than run as a Multi Op station.
That way you had 3 chances to get Renfrew County (REN) into the log.
As it turns out from what we were told from people we had contacted there is a good chance that we were the only operators from Renfrew. Not sure to be honest, but every one told us that they were happy to get us in the log as Renfrew is rare…
According to our notes between Tom, Jose and myself approx 60 operators got REN in the log in the 3 hours we were able to operate before the cold just took the fun out of it. So if you got VA2EPR/ve3 or VA3PCJ/p or VA3QV (I did not sign /p) then you were one of the lucky 60… If not sorry… blame it on the weather…
Picture courtesy VA3PCJ
We headed down the hill and warmed up… The Tavern Restaurant in Wilno Ontario is another story… and its also a very nice place to stop to refuel oneself after a day in the cold.
Tom VA2EPR is the younger operator… I’m the other one (without my famous hat)
Picture courtesy VA3PCJ
On Sunday am I decided to again give out some contacts from Ottawa (OTT) using my VA3RCS callsign. According to the OQP Rules I could not participate from Ottawa and Renfrew using the same callsign unless I was a rover and as I had not been a rover on Saturday…. oh well… I dusted off my old VA3RCS call and started right at 8am on the Sunday am… I managed a total of 37 QSOs in what I would call poor band conditions… and outside of taking small breaks for coffee, snacks etc I finally called it quits at about 130 pm…
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So here is the final tally for both days…
Saturday- VA3QV Renfrew County (REN) QRP 5W- 19 QSO’s with 16 multis for a total of 592 points
Sunday- VA3RCS Ottawa (OTT) 100w- 38 QSO’s with 30 multis for a total of 1680 points
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Not that I ever concidered myself a contester but… Thats about the worst scores I have ever even thought of submitting… But the important part was I did have fun… And I’m willing to bet that whoever wins the OQP most likely had either VA3PCJ, VA2EPR, VA3QV or VA3RCS in their logs… And thats a big part of what makes it fun…
73bob
Tags: amateur radio, Ontario QSO Party, VA2EPR, VA3PCJ, va3qv, va3rcs, VE3XT
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