I have heard the enemy and it is … us???

Good Friday morning,

This morning just around 1130 eastern I was spinning the dial on the 40m band and stopped in on the ECARS Net on 7.255.  The net control station was WB3GVD Joe in Delaware…  We made the contact rather easily which proves the inverted L likes 40m as welll as 20 and 80m so things are good.

Now comes the rant part….  There were one heck of a lot of “Whistles, Tuner uppers, am carriers and much more deliberate interference.  Now unless every pirate station was sitting on 7.255 we have to assume that most of this interference came from the amateur community.

All I can ask is WHY???  If you don’t like the net then spin the dial…  If you don’t like the NCS then come back an hour later and there will be a new NCS….  If you don’t like me then come back in 5 minutes and someone else will be checking in…  If you don’t like amateur radio take up stamp collecting or some other hobby…

This makes no sense….

73bob

Upcoming event- ONTARIO QSO PARTY

This weekend is the weekend of the two day Ontario QSO Party which is very well managed by the Contest Club of Ontario.

The contest is run over two days but splits in the middle so everyone can have a nap and re charge their batteries.  I was never sure if that was the operators batteries or their equipments batteries.  I have never been in favour of this style of event as it tends to make people shy away from the contest if they were planning a portable station. 

(Now you know why I don’t like it…)  Bob’s Rant Starts here….

Its hard enough to get all your radio toys out to a remote location along with all the creature conforts needed for a successful opertion without having to tear down at the end of the first day… go somewhere to take your nap … and then set everything up again for the sprint to the finish….  80m and 160m can be good bands in the overnight hours and we are missing some great chances at contacts…. Especially with the 40m band being so …  whats that word I am thinking of???  OH YA  LOUSY!!! recently that in a lot of cases 80m or 160m on the Saturday evening would be my best chance of working most of Ontario…  Those bands are best in the evenings/overnights  and that chance has been taken away from me…  I’ll leave the defination of “best” for your definations but I can tell you that they are definately not “daytime bands”…—>Bob’s rant has ended…

So due to the forced “nap time” here are my plans for the Ontario QSO Party for this year…  I will be operting from home as VA3QV using my limited space long wire and praying for low noise.  I will have my omni directional horizontal loop up for 2m and there will be a 6m rotatable dipole up as well.  The dipole will be north-south so the signals will be hopefully going east west.  No rotor for this one just aim and go…

The Manotick Amateur Radio Group is planning a last minute excursion to the Baxter Conservation Center which is just south of Ottawa for the Sunday part (thats after nap time) contest.  They should be operating with their club callsign of VE3AIR.  This group is a very enthuaistic group with excellent leadership and normally give 100% effort when they go out….  Their field day effort for 2008 was very well run and operating 5A they were able to get the highest score in Canada for the class…  Not bad for their first field day…  If the contest was a straight through event they I’m sure they would of brought a very strong multi op station into the picture and would of given out lots of “OTT” contacts…  If the weather is cooperating and they can scare up enough bodies I will be joining them on Sunday.  Failing that I will be continue the 2nd day from home…  There is a slight chance that I will activate XL3RCS from the museum lighthouse as a QRP single op station but at this time its just a thought. 

Thats it for now….  more details on this later….

73bob

Tuesday morning RANT

WARNING- THIS IS BOB ON A RANT-

Today we are “Ranting” on a couple of topics…  The first one being on the topic of “Canada Post” and my FT 847 , and the 2nd topic is the upcoming visit of President Obama to Ottawa on Thursday…

First of all Canada Post and the FT 847-  With the advent of the new technology that allows Parcel Tracking you have the advantage of knowing where your parcel is at any given time…

In my case the following has been learned:

The parcel was shipped from Windsor Ontario and accepted into the system by Canada Post at 1638 hrs on Friday.  At 2252 hrs on Friday it arrived in Kitchener Ontario where I assume it was sorted and then sent on the way to Ottawa. 

On Monday Feburary 16th at 0248 hrs it arrived in Ottawa and sorted for local delivery.  At 0722 hrs on Monday it was loaded on a truck and sent out for delivery….  And thats were it stopped….   No further listings on the system….  Where is it???  Did they try and deliver it on Monday???  Someone was home all day between 7am and 6pm and “Toby” would let us know if someone had knocked at the door…  The dog does not like anyone knocking at his door and barks loudly untill you call him off…

Now as you know its Tuesday Morning and my parcel has now been in a truck in Ottawa for over 24 hrs and the system seems to have failed.  There is no point in tracking a parcel for 75% of the trip…  Knowing it made it to Ottawa and now is lost does not make me feel any better….

The same technology that told me it stopped in Kitchener could of just as easily told me that it was not delivered and brought back to the warehouse for a 2nd try at delivery on Tuesday…  It could of even informed me that it was waiting for me at a local post office for pick up after the delivery attempt failed…. 

The ” wait & see” attitude is whats causing this rant.  I had expected not to get the radio untill much later in the week…  But knowing where it is and knowing the time frame of its travels so far is rather frustrating… 

ITS NOT LOST….   ITS VISITING OTTAWA!!!

More on this later if and when it ever arrives….

————————————

The second part of todays rant is with the upcoming visit of President Obama to Ottawa on Thursday… 

FIRST OF ALL I AM NOT AGAINST PRESIDENT OBAMA—  I HAVE A LOT OF RESPECT FOR THE PERSON AND THE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT.  

My comments today are based on what his visit will do to MY city…  For some background info please visit the Ottawa Citizen’s story  on the advance preparations for the visit..

The visit will snarl traffic, it will close roads, it will effectivly close the airspace over Ottawa and so in effect it will close the downtown core of Ottawa along with the Airport Parkway for most, if not all of the normal working day…  What do we get from this???  So far its not clear…  There are going to be no public ceremonies as this is a working visit compared to a state visit. 

Like any other business traveller President Obama will arrive at the Ottawa Airport on his corporate Jet,  he will travel by limo to downtown Ottawa where he will meet with his business associates then leave for the most part the same way he arrived and then head back home…

The little detail I forgot to mention to you is the fact that as you know any President of the United States of America does not travel light….  The corporate jet is not by Lear but by Boeing…  The Limo is armour plated and travels with more security and firepower than most 3rd world countries have in their military…   And the Ottawa Police/RCMP traffic escorts make zipping in and out of traffic a breeze as they block traffic and streets for him…

ITS A SAD STATE OF AFFAIRS BUT I DO FEEL THE INCREASED  SECURITY IS NECESSARY IN THIS DAY AND AGE…  WORLD EVENTS HAVE PROVEN THAT THERE ARE A LOT OF PEOPLE/GROUPS OUT THERE WHO DO NOT SHARE OUR RESPECT FOR LIFE AND OUR VALUES… 

Its just that I have lived in Ottawa all my life and have seen what these visits do to traffic and the normal activites of my city.  Kings, Queens, Presidents and Prime Ministers have all been here in the past and they all have messed up my city… 

Now more than ever with the stronger threat of terrorism, strong security is needed to protect the President and he has the best working for him from both sides of the border. 

I hope that during this visit President Obama gives the locals, the people who are going to be stuck in traffic by all these security mesures a chance to catch a glimse and perhaps even a friendly wave as he is whisked between location on his working visit…

This concludes my Tuesday Rant and we return you to our regular blog!!!

73bob

 

The past weekend…

Its now Monday morning and things are starting to get back to normal after the “holidays”…

The day started this am with a “Dads Taxi” trip from home to Carleton University where Erika needed to be to sign some OSAP Papers and then for a 12noon class. 

The OC TRANSPO union will be having a forced vote on Thursday and if the membership goes against the unions suggestion and accepts the Citys offer we might get our busses back on the road in about 10 days or so.  Now this has nothing to do with radio but the strike has caused me to have to change many plans so I can get family members back and forth between school, work and various appointments and it is sure hard to sympathise with those who are on strike who were making more than I made before the strike and will be making more than I ever made after the strike.  Although I do grant them the right to strike, taking their actions in December which adversely affected those who take public transport at a very difficult and cold time of the year has not helped their public image whatsoever and not really garnered the union any public support…

I for one am starting to get fed up with the heavier traffic, the Dads Taxi Runs and the lack of parking spots anywhere in the city…  If they don’t come back soon…they can stay out till ….

Anyway lets get back to radio after my mini-rant…

As you know I took Trisha to Gananoque this Saturday and the radio work was not the best…  I made only two  contacst on 40m (VE3GX in Ottawa via groundwave and VE9HC in Hartland NB) and one contact on the Kingston Repeater and two contacts on the Smith Falls Repeater.  The trip itself kind of had me wondering why I bothered to even hook up the antennas for the trip…

Sunday was slightly better with me joining the North Bay Net on 3.768 at 0900 which took me into the Pothole Net on 3.760 here in Ottawa at 1000 hrs.  I was hoping to hear the Ontario Swap Shop on 40m at noon but there were only digital sounds on 7.055 with some CW as well so I’m guessing that the Swap Shop was pushed off the air due to longer than usual band conditions…

Around 1400 Hrs I was able to check into the Trans Canada Net on 14.140 with VE7TA as the NCS.  This proved that the antenna changes done earlier in the week worked but there is still some work to go yet…

I took some time off to do the shopping thing with Liz and then came back into the shack around 1800 and was able to check into the sandbox net and although I did not write down his call he was located outside Boston Mass, which once again proves that the bands are going longer… earlier in the evenings still…

I came up to 3.755 in anticipation of the 80m version of the Ontario Swap Net but just as the net started the band started to go even longer and all was lost to me atleast…

I can’t help but to feel sorry for those new hams who have heard us talking about how good the band conditions used to be…  We were even talking about how things would be changing for the better by now…  It ain’t happened yet…  I hope we have not lost any bodies to various other interests as they wait for the sunspot cycle that seems to elude us…

I have scouted out a potential site for my CF3RCS participation in the FYBO and will be testing it out this Saturday (or Sunday or both days)for an hour or so…  More info on this later in the week but I hope to set up the 817/tuner combo on the tailgate of the truck and string out the doublet between two friendly trees and check out the noise level…  You can’t even start to guess about propagation so just seeing how good or bad the noise floor is will have to do…

Enjoy the week and more updates later

73bob

RANT-Its another contest weekend-RANT

WARNING…Bob is on a RANT today…WARNING…

As you most likely know that this weekend is a contest weekend with plenty of amateurs out there cluttering up the bands screaming the dreaded words…

“CQ CONTEST”

No I don’t begrude them their space to contest and I do admit its a great way to look for that rare location I might need if I was to actively chase DX but…. 

How can an Ontario Amateur station have the lack of brains to call CQ CONTEST on 3.753 on a Sunday Morning at 0900 with his power cranked and his speech processor cranked and not know that he would be knocking the stuffings out of the ONTARS net on 3.755??? 

I will happily give them a contact… I don’t object to contesters…  I even participate in a few myself… but they really p!ss me off when they insist on taking over the complete band and ignore the nets that have been in place for years or just QRM the heck out  two hams trying to have a decent conversations…

It would be really boring for the contesters if us ragchewers just decided to shut down every contest weekend…Then who would they talk to…

73bob

Tuesday is RANT day

WARNING:  BOB IS ON A RANT TODAY

Recently I have noticed lots of people not acknowledging emails…

If I send out a “FYI” email or am asking you a question or making a statement that should be needing a comment it seems people don’t reply…

Some example of this would be:

“I’ll be listening for you on frequency at 1900 hrs”-  If they don’t acknowledge this email how do I know if they will be calling?

“I believe we should be following this course of action.  Do you agree?”- How do I know how they stand on the issue? Did they even get the email I sent?

” Could you please advise me when it happens…”  If I don’t hear from them did it not happen or did they not get my first email?

Recently I have found out that there must be many emails floating around in Cyberspace that have not been delivered as I have sent out emails that have not been acknowledged but have not bounced back to me.  When I have sent out a 2nd email the people have said that they never got the first email and I have NO reason to doubt them.  I just assumed they should of got the first email as it never bounced back to me…

Take the time to acknowledge emails… courtesy does not hurt and it keeps the lines of communications open…

73bob