Don’t you just hate it when the “but…” gets put into the statement?
Anyway as you know VA3PCJ and myself spent Saturday operating the ILLW event from the Sand Point Lighthouse in Braeside Ontario (CA0034) and we had a great time…
I managed 12 contacts with other lighthouses along with 7 contacts with stations who were just calling CQ so I ended up with 19 contacts in the log. This itself, is not really a large amount but the fact that I was able to break 19 Pileups while operating QRP SSB with a portable antenna kinda is impressive. If you think its easy then dial back your power and point your beam away from who you want to talk to and see how easy it is…
Sunday turned out to be a radio day as well… I walked over the the Science Museum in Ottawa ( I live less than a km away) and guest operated VE3RAM (OVMRC Club Station) which was operating from the Cape North (Old) Lighthouse (CA0016) which is on the museum grounds… The 4 contacts I put into the log added to their score… From what I saw of their log they did really well but they were running 100w with multiple antennas… But they still did good…
The “but” side of things is that I have found out that I will most likely not get D64K into the log as today I saw the following posted:
I have been listening and watching the cluster but it seems that their location (Island on the far side of Africa) is just not in my skip zone on any band. Actually I have looked at the DX Map and I’m not getting much from that area of the world…
I’ve made contacts further but as you can see from the above map… the eastern coast of Africa tends to be elusive for me…
I did hear them a couple of times but not strong enough to determine if they would of been answering me so I never actually even called them… Perhaps next time after I do something to increease my radials to the east. I have good recieve to the west and the south but I am lacking the right amount of real estate to get the proper radial pattern to the north and east… Not complaining as I’m not doing that poorly but you can only do so much in a compromise situation…
However the Weather is starting to cool down a bit and the kids will be going back to school soon which will free up local parks and further away llocations for day trips to work portable from… I do see a couple of (local) SOTA activations in my future before the snow falls and we do have the Ottawa Valley QRP Societys “Chilicon” event coming up in Mid September… Actually there are some thoughts of heading to the Champlain Lookout (local high ground) and operate for the ARRL VHF Contest in September…
There is lots of time to play radio before I hibernate for the winter…
73bob
Tags: amateur radio, Chilicon, D64K, lighthouse event, Ottawa Valley Mobile Radio Club, Ottawa Valley QRP Society, SOTA
