First day is done

We're 682 km closer to our destination right now.  Not much to write about today except that it rained, heavily, for most of it.   Most expensive gas put in the tank today was $1.51 a litre, and that was at French River on Hwy 69 North.

On the way here I monitored several 2m repeaters, Belleville, Trenton, Uxbridge, Lindsay, Orillia, Parry Sound, Alban, and Sudbury.  Not a thing was heard on any of them, and nobody answered my calls on them. One can't help wonder why we have so many 2m repeaters when nobody seems to use them??

The weather looks better tomorrow so hopefully I will have a more interesting day. 

Tomorrow will be a 670 km day, ending at Rainbow Falls Provincial Park, which is just past Schreiber on Hwy 17 West.

And......we're loaded

Tomorrow morning the VE3CLQ wagon rolls westward with a planned departure time of 0700 local. 

Today was a busy one with the final preparations being carried out and finally loading the truck. I wasn't sure how it was all going to fit in to be honest, between the camping gear and the radio gear there's a lot of gear.  Anyway, it's all loaded and there's plenty of room left.

The destination for tomorrow night is Chutes Provincial Park near Massey, Ontario.  That's about 98 Kms west of Sudbury.  So far the weather forecast isn't the greatest but we always hope for the best!

The route tomorrow will be East on Hwy 1 to Hwy 12 North to Hwy 400 / 69 North, and eventually to Hwy 17 West.  I'll be monitoring all the 2m repeaters between Kingston and Massey along the route, as well as 146.520 simplex. 

And.................we're off!!

The Solar Panel in action.

The Preparations Continue.....

There are six days left till I leave on the great western adventure and I've been pretty busy getting the radio and camping equipment sorted out and ready to go.

I have my FT-857D ready to go in the Go-Box, along with the FTL meter and the YT-100 tuner.  Power for the radio will be provided by a 12v 110 amp deep cycle battery that will be kept topped up with a 7w solar panel.  

Mounted in my truck I have an FT-8800, and all the repeaters along the routes I will be taking are already programmed in it.  Finding all of those repeaters took quite a bit of research as no matter what list you find on Google, you'll find another one tomorrow with different frequencies, different off-sets, or totally different PL tones.  In the end I had to search out each local club on line and use what their websites listed.

For antennas I have a 5/8 whip for my 2m rig along with a 1/4 whip for UHF.  These two antennas are fed from the FT-8800 through a diplexer.  There are not very many 440 repeaters along my route, but I have the capability anyway.

HF wise I'm taking three antennas.  The first one is my portable 31' Chillycon Special, and the second one is my Buddipole system.  I've also packed a 66' long wire and a 9:1 balun.  These antennas should do me just fine in my quest for DX.

There are a few more things to pick up this week, such as my Blue Cross coverage, and a phone roaming package.  Apart from those two items I think I'm just about ready to roll out of here.

The Red Coat Trail

The Red Coat Trail is a 1,300 km (810 mi) route that approximates the path taken in 1874 by the North-West Mounted Police in their quest to bring law and order to the Canadian West, and this is the route I'll be following on my trip out west.

I've travelled across Canada a number of time over the past 20 years, but I've always gone by the Trans-Canada Hwy, so this will be a great opportunity to see parts of Canada that the average Canadian never would in their travels.

The truck is heading into the garage tomorrow morning for a major servicing in preparation for the trip.  Hopefully things will go as smooth as it possibly can, and let's hope the weather remains good.  I have had a warning that the bugs are still bad along the North Shore of Lake Superior....so that might prove interesting.

This trip is a holiday for me, not a 'cannon ball run', so I'm looking at about 5 hours driving a day and doing a lot of touristy things along the way.  It should be a fun trip.

The route I'll be following

I'll write more on the radio equipment I'm taking along later in the week.....well, there had to be something about ham radio in this article......

The International Lighthouse and Lightship Weekend

The International Lighthouse and Lightship Weekend is the weekend of August 16th & 17th this year.  My local club will be activating two lighthouses, Nine Mile Point Lighthouse, CAN-578 on Simcoe Island, and Point Petre Lighthouse, CAN-788 in Prince Edward County.

This is the fifth year the club has activated theese lights for the contest, it's always a great time, the weather is usually good, and the DX normally rolls in pretty good.

If you've never activated a Lighthouse before get out and do it!!  It's lots of fun, and a great way to expose the hobby to the general public.

For the first time since we started activating these lights I won't be around to help out.  I'm leaving Kingston for a 29 day solo holiday, leaving the wife and the rest of the family here in Kingston, while I drive out west visiting friends along the way.

The portable antennas have been tweaked to perfection, extra parts purchased, 12v, 110 amp battery charged, and the go boxes ready for loading.  It's going to be a great adventure and I plan on uploading blog entries as often as I can find wifi along the way.  Stay tuned for "Bill's Most Excellent Adventure".........

New Portable Antenna

A few weeks ago I was in touch with Bob, VA3QV, to see what he's up to now that he no longer keeps his Blog up to date.  Bob's doing well, and as per usual is up to no good. 

One of the items on his QRZ.com page was a reference to the antenna he is currently using at home.  It's a longwire up as an inverted V, and he's just about finished his DXCC using it.

Here it is, corrected from the diagram on the QRZ page, as per Bob's instructions:

I'm planning on using one of these one my upcoming four week road trip (more on that later).   I will try it with both a 4:1 and 9:1 UnUn just to see what the difference is.  I'll post my results in a future posting.   If you make one, let Bob and I know how it performs for you.

IARU Contest - The Follow Up........

VE3MNE taking a break

Let me start off by stating that I've had far worse contest results..........in fact some have been so bad they became "non-contests".  This contest was not one of my better ones.  Only 71 contacts in the log from 34 countries, not very happy with that, but that's the way it goes sometimes.

Saturday morning started off with the SFI at 166, SN also at 166, A Index at 6, and the K Index at 2.   The only bands we could hear anything on at all were 20m and 15m, the other bands were just silent, the S needle never moved on them.  It was a very strange day for propagation, there were many European stations booming in at S9 +20, but they could not hear me, or the other station, VE3MNE, operating from the same site.  

I started off on 20m and worked US station after US station, but could not work a European despite them still booming in.  Eventually I managed to work GR2HQ, the RSGB HQ Station, but the band stayed at short skip distance for most of the day.  The other thing we had to contend with was some very deep QSB which just made things even more difficult.

I had two antennas to play with, a homebrew 80m OCF Dipole and a homebrew 31' vertical.  Both worked very well and tuned great on all bands.  The radio in use was my FT-857D with the YT-100 Tuner.  Looking back now I think using the FT-857 was probably my biggest mistake, but it was convienient and I was too lazy to take the shack apart to bring out the FT-950 again.

It was not until about 2300 UTC that the bands really came alive and DX could hear us.  Most of my contacts were made on 15m, the rest on 20m, and the very last four contacts were made on 40m. 

While disappointing radio wise, it was still a great weekend to be out playing radio. 

The next radio activity on the horizon will be the Sunday, July 27th, Brewer’s Mill Island activation. This is our clubs third attempt at getting this island activated. I'll post more details of this closer  to the date.....you never know.......VA3QV may just try and help us out with a contact!

IARU HF World Championships - 2014

This weekend, the IARU HF World Championships takes place.  This contest is always a great one for rare and strange DX, and I try to never miss it.

This year I'll be operating portable back out at our Field Day site on Hay Bay.  We purposely left the dipole antennas up for this contest as they are up in the air at about 100'. 

So far the propagation for the weekend doesn't look like it's going to be very good for us, but hey, it's a radio weekend so it can't be all that bad.....right ??

Not sure which radio I'm going to use, I might try and just use the new Go-Box, and the FT-857D for this contest, that way I don't have to rip  the shack apart again as I did for Field Day.

Stay tuned for the results!