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

Some time in Weston Park

After a short email exchange with VA3PCJ on Monday nite we decided to walk over to the local Starbucks for a morning coffee and then head over to Weston Park where I could stretch out my W3EDP and he could test out his newly built Elecraft KX1 and put my CW skills to shame.

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The reason for stretching out the W3EDP is that this Saturday I will be heading out to two seperate portable station events that will be having multi operators in a close proximity.  From previous years I know that frequency coordintaion will be an issue several times during the day…  Taking the W3EDP gives me the option of sitting on 80m in the mid morning and making a couple of contacts along with in the late afternoon when the others are CQing DX on the higher bands…

The park was much quieter now that the Kids are back in school but we set up close to the kiddie wading pool that was closed for the season and left the area that has the swings and slides available for the pre schoolers with their caregivers…

I stretched out my W3EDP north south which made it slightly directional east-west.  As usual I brought my FT 817 (5w output)  along with the LDG QRP Autotuner.  I added the comment of slightly as the antenna was about 10 feet agl at the radio end and about 20 feet agl at the other so it was not really that high.  I am guessing that the NVIS effect came info play on my 80m contact and my 40m contacts…

Yes the contacts…  In the 90 minutes we stayed at the park I managed to make contacts on 80m, 40m, 20m, 17m, and 15m.  I tried listening to 12m and 10m but heard no one….

Here is my log for the day…

80m__VA3OGR_Grant_Athens ON_ 55miles or 11miles/watt

40m__VE3BDB_Bob__Orillia ON_194 miles or 38 miles/watt

40m__VE3CBK_Chris_Kanata ON_14 miles or 3 miles/watt

20m__K0UB___Bill__N Dakota_1296 miles or 259 miles/watt

17m__K5DLO_Don_Oklahoma_ 1217 miles or 243 miles/watt

15m__8R1AK _Esmond_Guyana_2866 miles or 573 miles/watt

Now some of you might be wondering about the “mile per watt” distance mentioned above…  Its fairly simple you take the estimated distance between you and the contacted station…  I like the QRZ Calculators as long as the other person filled his coordinates correctly and then divide that distance by the output power used in the contact…

As an example….

100 miles at 5w output = 100/5 which works out to 20 miles per watt

100 miles at 100w output = 100/100 which works out to 1 mile per watt

but if I had lowered my power on the 817 to .5w….

100 miles at .5w = 100/.5 which works out to 200 miles per watt

I think you get the picture…  Now these distances are not that great even for QRP operators…  Lots of CW QRP/Digital types get into VK Land on 1W and that would be working out to approx 10000 miles per watt…  Today I was doing this with QRP SSB… A good antenna system helps… but anything is possiable…

So I just figured that I would start to include the miles per watt distance on some of my contacts from the parks as its always QRP Portable for now (sold my FT 897) and the portable antennas are sometime installed in less than stellar locations so it gives you an idea of how much (or how little) performance you can get from a Field Station…  Your mileage may/will vary but I doubt you will have more fun than I do….

But back to the park visit…

The weather was nice…  The bands were cooperating (contacts on 5 different bands and DX as well) and good company and discussions…  Around noon we both reminded ourselves that we had other places to be for the rest of the day and so we headed off in our seperate directions to get back to reality… But it was a great way to spend a couple of hours between coffee and radio…

Hopefully later this week (Wed am would be nice) we can do this all over again…

73bob

ps…  In the “Its a small world” catagory.  Chris VE3CBK will be one of the participants at Chilicon this weekend which is the 2nd event I will participating in on Saturday…  The first time we ever talked to each other  on the radio was today…  Never met him at any club meeting…  Never talked to him on a repeater…  And we only live 15 miles apart….  go figure…

pps… Posting was edited September 12th to correct the distance for 8R1AK and the miles per Watt rating….

At least its dry…

Wednesdays snow has finally melted…  Just a few snowbanks (where the plows deposited the parking lot snow) and they seem to be departing very quickly…  The forcast (best guess) for today  is overcast with temps around 7 deg C (thats 45 deg F in American) .  The key part of the forcast however is they think its going to be dry and above freezing…  Seeing that we are not going to get many more days this year where I can walk to the park and set up to play radio without the need for a Parka and Mukluks (warm style of winter boots) I am getting the urge to charge up the battery on the FT817 and head out around noon to stretch the Par End Fed QRP Multiband antenna from a tree branch and take advantage of the good band conditions and the above average weather conditons.

I’ll do some listening from home before I plan to leave and if the bands seem open and the weather is still cooperating I think a walk to Starbucks with a walk to Weston Park right after could the activity of the day… 

73bob