Now isn’t that an inviting title…. Saturday in the Swamp…. Sounds like a Redneck love song…
Anyway the Mer Blue Swamp is a conservation area in Ottawa’s South East Area and its fairly close to my QTH… Easy to get to and the area is really under used so we normally have no issues setting up for a while…
Around 1300 edst VA3PCJ picked me up at home and we headed over to set up our gear… I brought my FT 817 along with my Buddistick antenna… Small Profile and easy to use…
And Jose VA3PCJ brought his IC 703 and decided to test out his home brewed 15m-40m magloop
And we enjoyed the great weather and the “average” band conditions… It was not really a QRP day but there were some great contesters out there who managed to pull out some QRP signals out of the pile ups and they were:
20M _____K0N
40M_____WT8C
40M_____NB8I
20-M_____N0S
20M_____W0E
20M_____N0N
All of the contacts today were courtesy of the Ohio QSO Party and the Kansas QSO Party and believe me it was hard slugging to get the 6 contacts that I did. We were at the park from around 1330 to about 1600 and I only got 6 stations in the log and all of them were CQing contest.
If you look at it another way…. My little QRP station managed to break 6 pile ups….
But we won’t talk about the ones I missed…
Anyway after a little after 1600 eastern time both Jose and myself heard some strange noise in the background… We listened carefully and decided that it was the sound of a Cold Beer calling us from an air conditioned establishement and so we packed up and headed over to a local watering hole and relaxed…
All in all it was a great afternoon… Wish you had been there…
73bob
Tags: amateur radio, Amateur Radio Portable Operations, Buddistick Vertical Antenna, Cold Beer, Homebrewed Magnetic Loop, Icom IC 703, Mer Bleue Swamp, VA3PCJ, Yaesu FT817
