LoTW and Lawnmowers...

Good Thursday afternoon everyone… < only one more day till the weekend…  >

Yesterday was a busy day and therefore not as much time was spend blogging as I would of liked…  Yesterday afternoon in my email inbox arrived my LoTW information from the ARRL…  I had about 2 hours to try and get things going before my daughter Trisha and myself headed downtown for the September General Meeting of the Ottawa Amateur Radio Club held at City Hall.  We got downtown by about 1730 and decided to grab supper in the food court of the Rideau Center Shopping Mall before heading over to the meeting for the 1900 start (get there early for the best seats…)

Supper was good (by food court standards) and then we walked down the street to City Hall…

The first meeting of the new season is usually not a busy night as lots of stuff is catch up…  Report on Field Day…  Report on the Flea Market (hamfest) and the introduction of the new executive…  In addition we had a great Guest Speaker… VA3RIR. 

VA3RIR,  Rapheal is a new ham who got into the hobby to support his hobby of Radio Controlled Planes and aviation.  This is really neat stuff as they now have cameras mounted in the planes and so the pilots by watching a monitor can see what the plane is actually doing in real time along with getting data from the plane that includes altitude, speed and a bunch of other interesting details which you can record for when you describe what happened just before the crash…

Now VA3RIR is not just using his callsign for his orignal hobby…  Since getting his callsign he has participated with several clubs…  is active on VHF and HF Voice and even convinced his XYL to pass her test and so not there are two active amateurs in their family and the Ottawa Amateur community gets two more active participants…

At the meeting we also found out what the executive has planned for us as well and it looks like we will have a good year…

As I mentioned earlier  …. LoTW….   I had about 2 hours to try and get everything going before the meeting and I got steps 1 through 4 done successfully and stalled on step 5….

Once I got home from the meeting I spent a couple more hours working on it and remained stalled on Step 5…  So far that 4 hours and no improvement….

This morning rather than get my bloodpressure up near tilt (again), which is not the best idea for an old Phart like myself….  I called VA3PCJ and Jose and myself walked over to Weston Park (again) and decided to enjoy a couple of hours flooding the park with RF…  Jose was using his KX1 and his Par End Fed and as usual I was using my FT 817 and my homebrewed W3EDP antenna…  My first contact of the day was with VE3ARD who lives in Pickering Ontario (just east of Toronto and just west of Oshawa) on 3.755 which is the ONTARS Net.  We started out strong but then the band started to fade which is normal for 80m daytime so I wished him 73 and cleared…

VA3PCJ was working 40m cw (no ssb on the KX1) and so I jumped over to 20m.  I was able to check in with KB4UUA who was the NCS for the INTERCON Net on 14.300.  She got my call on the first try (remember I was QRP) and so our contact of  1150 miles worked out to be  23o miles per watt.  Not too bad for the day in my opinion…

However that would appear to be the last contact of the day…  On 15m I heard several European Stations call DX but I could not break the Pileups…  I heard some Europeans and Americans on 17m but had no luck with pileups and also no replies when I tried calling CQ DX on 18.157.5 so…  it was not meant to be…. 

Now we bring the Lawnmowers into the picture….  Its a public park….  and the City decided that it was time to groom the park so a crew arrived and with 3 riding mowers suddenly were making lots of noise and also getting close to coax runs so….  We tore down fairly quickly and let the City Workers to clean up the park for the next time we arrive…

We retreated over to the local Starbucks (if you look at the previous posting and its map all the locations are there for you) and sat down to enjoy a coffee and also brag/complain/lie about the ones we almost got….

Like the VK station who was calling CQ…..  “That station down in the mud” is what you called me….  “you knew someone was there” were your exact words ….  Just could not get my call….  But thanks for trying….

That might of been me…. so thanks and hopefully next time I’ll get you in the log….

This afternoon now that I have calmed down….  I’ll go back to working on my LoTW with the hope this time…  I’ll get it right…  I don’t blame LoTW…  I know its something I’m missing or not doing right….  But that don’t help right now….  Lets see if I can do it right… Before the stress indicator flashes tilt… again

73bob

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Tags: amateur radio, elecraft kx1, INTERCON Net, Logbook of the World, LoTW, Par end Fed Antenna, Starbucks, W3EDP Antenna, Weston Park, Yaesu FT 817