It goes without saying but… “Happy Fathers Day” to any of you are Fathers and I hope you had a great day yesterday… Given the average age of our hobby its safe to say that most of us were being honoured on Fathers Day than were visiting with our own dads.. This unfortunately is reality…. Our hobby is getting older and so are we…
Well although the weekend was a “little dissapointing” on the Radio Side of things I did have fun anyway… I managed to get a new W3EDP built but so far have not been able to test it due to what I would call “Poor” band conditions. The cluster says no one is out there I can hear and the FT450 is confirming it… I can’t really complain as I look at my Logbook for the last 10 months…
If I can make contacts in 134 DXCC entities in 10 months then I guess we can’t really call the band condition poor now can we…
However I do look forward to taking the FT817 our for some fresh air in the next couple of days and test out the W3EDP as I need it for Field Day… If I want to make a few contacts on 80m and 160m as the Par will look after 10m to 40m and next on my build list is a 6m delta loop that I found the plans for on the WWW.
The Delta Loop is in effect 1 full wave lenght of wire in a equlateral triangle (all 3 sides equal lenght). Nothing fancy about it but it does work. I had very good luck using a 20m loop in the field before and am going to use the same support system with just a shorter length of wire… It should do fine…
Its easy to build and I have all the parts needed in stock so… Its easy… Its looking like I will be operating QRP on 2m to 160m in the 1b catagory but I have not figured out from where yet so… stay tuned…
Like I mentioned earlier it was a GREAT weekend anyway or despite the Solar CRAP messing up the bands… Managed to get 3 BBQs done and on Sunday my daughter (Erika) joined us for the Fathers Day Feast… Two of my Three daughters made it this year so I was really pleased… Daughter #1 has a large family (it was her daughter that made me a Great Grandfather this year) so I know she had her hands full at her place…
So whats on the go in the next little while???
First off I have to build and test the 6m delta loop and test the newly built W3EDP. This one was made with 17 feet of 300 ohm Twin Lead and 67 feet of automotive wire… I’m feeding it with a LDG 4:1 balun
I’ll let you know how things progress as we get closer to Field Day and the RAC Canada Day Contest…
On the Amateur Social side of things… NR4CB Connie is slowly making her way north and we hope to have a group meeting with her just a day or so after Field Day… The most convient place to meet up with her for us would be on Iroquois Island at the Seaway Lock Station… The above link will take you to her blog and you can see her plans for a very ambition trip… If you follow her on Twitter you can join in on the trip.
Like I mentioned earlier in this post… A few of the boys from the 3730/VE3ORF Group are planning to meet up with Connie after field day in Iroquois Ontario at the Lock station. Its only about an hours drive from Ottawa and it won’t take her off her planned route by much… Set up a Portable HF Station and an Portable BBQ and Eyeball QSO will take place…
The hardest thing about this will be trying to find a time that we can get together that fits in with the schedules of all concerned… People have other stuff to do rather than ham radio ( people actually tell me this all the time but I don’t understand) and we are trying to do this with Connie’s schedule in mind as she is the one travelling and doing all the hard stuff… We all realize that nothing is carved in stone but we all would like to meet up if we can…
Check either Connie’s Blog or check back here closer to the date as we try and coordinate the visit…
And lets hope the bands getter better…
73bob
Tags: 6M Delta Loop, amateur radio, amateur radio antenna, Happy Fathers Day, NR4CB, The Bionic Nerd, VE3ORF/3730 group, W3EDP Antenna
