After spending last weekend at Field Day, in a campsite near Harrowsmith, Ontario, I seem to have picked up a tick. After complaining to my wife about something being wrong with my back, she discovered a large red spot with a tick at the centre. See photo on the left.
I've no idea how this thing got on my back, I never felt anything crawling on me that I can remember. The tick has been removed, and placed, alive, in a pill bottle awaiting an appointment with my doctor.
This is the first time I've ever had a tick, so this has opened my eyes to the dangers of these little buggers!
If you're doing POTA or SOTA you need to be aware of these as they can cause several bad health issues.
One of the best websites I can find is this one HERE, produced by the Ontario Government. It's well worth the read, and it may save you some aggravation in the long run!!
If you live in Ontario, you might be interested in the map below:
It's over for another year. This year's version of Field Day was a very wet one. It actually rained, heavily, for about 20 of the 24 hours. I'm lucky that I have a very good lightweight tarp that attaches to the back of the truck, and gives me a large dry area to work in.
Our club operated as a 5A QRP station, and did quite well given the lousy propagation we had over the weekend. We put 338 contacts in the log, and used 80m through 10m, minus the WARC bands. CW did 153, SSB did 131, and Digi did 54. Not too bad for a QRP battery powered setup. I guess we'll have to wait until next December, when the ARRL publishes the final scores, to find out how we actually did.
As I said the propagation was not the best, but given what we have had to work with over the last month, we guessed it wouldn't be very good.
Neys Provincial Park is a beautiful spot, and I was lucky enough to get a site right by the beach for the night. The only downside to the site was the billions (and I do mean BILLIONS) of flying critters that insisted on visiting me.
Neys is POTA site CA-0316. I had a good evening activating the park and put 36 contacts in the log....before the bugs won the war, and drove me back into cover.
The next morning I started the long drive to Chutes Provincial Park. It was a beautiful day, with brilliant blue skies, and really enjoyable. It was a 620 km day and it took a little over 7 hours to do, thanks to the roadworks I had to navigate.
Once I arrived a Chutes I was surprised to get the very same campsite I had for my first night on the trip, so setup was a breeze as I knew how everything fit there.
It didn't take long to get on the air, and soon had CA-0181 on the air before supper. The campsite was very quiet, I don't think very many people were staying there.
After supper I did a POTA late shift and got many contacts in the log before the inevitable rain hit, and it didn't stop for the rest of the night.
Tomorrow I have another 7 hour day on the road, but at the end of the day I'll be back home.
I'll be on the air as part of the Upper Canada QRP Clubs team, operating as VE3UCC.
I'm hoping the propagation, and the weather, both decide to behave themselves and allow us all to have a great weekend, in the field, and on the bands!
I did not get an activation done at Gull Lake last night as the campsite had a S9+20 noise floor and I couldn't hear a thing. This means that I have not managed to do a POTA activation in Alberta, west bound or east bound.
Today will be a short day, only 630 km, ending up in Deleau, Manitoba. This is a fantastic little campground that the regional municipality looks after. Well worth a stay, and they ask just a small donation to stay there!
Just before noon I arrived at the small village of Pontiex, this is the home of CA-1138, Notukeu Regional Park, and it had never been activated before. Well, it's activated now! I managed to put 21 contacts in my log in a little over 20 minutes. Propagation was still not the best, but with 10 screaming watts out of the KX3...it was on the air.
Instead of going straight to the campground at Deleau, I went north about 15 km and activated CA-1061, Oak Lake Provincial Park, in fact I had so much fun here activating, I ate my supper there and did the late shift from the park as well.
After my two activations I drove back to Deleau and set up camp for the night.
Tomorrow I'm off to Arron Provincial Park, just 20 km west of Dryden, Ontario.
The next morning was pretty chilly, with the temperature being only 5C at 0630 in the morning when I climbed out of my sleeping bag, and began another 600 km drive east.
Just past Winnipeg the highway enters the Boreal Forest, where kilometres of pine and spruce trees are mixed with the granite outcroppings of the Canadian Shield.
After a quick lunch in Nipigon, Ontario, I arrived at the trailhead for CA-0245, Kama Hills Provincial Park. This was another park that had never been activated before, and it wasn't long before you realize why that was. The trail goes almost straight up, almost a scramble than a hike. It takes about an hour to reach the park boundary, and that was as far as I went.
Once I was set up I realized my battery was nearly out of power and I had to restrict my output to 5w SSB. To be honest I didn't think I would get a completed activation here, but was I wrong. Among my contacts that day were Larry F5PYI in France, and Jose EA1BUL in Spain....they made my day!
That evening I ended the day at Neys Provincial Park, and had a successful activation of CA-0316.
Tomorrow night I should make it to Chutes Provincial Park in Massey, Ontario.
The first day back on the road again today....heading home! I have a 703 km drive over Highway 3 to do, and suspect it will take about 8 hours through the mountains.
I find Highway 3 East is a terrible highway to drive, multiple steep grades and descents, and many tourists on the road who have no idea about how to safely drive in the mountains! Make sure you have good breaks to do this route!
No radio work was done during the day, as the propagation was not very good at all, the propagation numbers were: SFI=184, SN=150, A Index=28, and the K Index=3. This gave us some very deep QSB.
It was an early start from Yahk to start day 2, and it was a chilly 7C (44F) under blue skies. I did manage to get in a POTA activation last evening after the propagation numbers improved, so CA-0750 was activated.
Just outside of Cranbrook I managed to get a solid 2m simplex contact with Don WR7DW, in Eureka, Montana, about 20 km south of my location on Hwy 3. It's always great to get a contact on .52 simplex!
It was another 700 km day and tonights stop will be at Gull Lake, Saskatchewan. Getting a bit tired already as two 700 km days is pretty exhausting at best.
Tomorrow is my last day here on the West Coast, so I thought it was time to bring you all up-to-date on what has been happening here. The first five days it rained...typical Vancouver weather! It's only been the last 2 days the weather has become warm and decent.
I had planned to activate 10 parks in and around Vancouver, I've managed to do 8. There does not seen to be very many Hunters in this part of the country. Here there is nowhere near the response to our POTA CQ's as we get in Ontario.
Over the last 18 days I have witnessed some of the worst propagation I have seen in my last 20 years in the hobby.....so that certainly hasn't helped.
In the end I finally got fed-up calling CQ on SSB, and switched to CW only. I ended up doing my first CW only activation. It was a bit nervous, and I believe there's a station in New Mexico who won't get credit for hunting me as I screwed up his callsign, but apart from that it went well.
I'm not sure what route I'm taking home yet, but both routes I'm looking at have many parks to activate....and a couple of ATNO's each.
Hopefully I'll be packed and out of here by 0700 tomorrow morning.
Last night was spent at CA-3921, Okanagan Lake Provincial Park. It's a small park, tucked in below the main highway.
Amazingly, the last park of this portion of the trip, I made several contacts back home to Ontario, including a QRP to QRP contact with Chris, VE3CBK. Chris was out activating the Armitage Marina Light (CAN-1342) for Lighthouses on the Air, when he saw my spot. I'd love to know what antenna he was using!
I made 10 contacts at this park, and then it was off down the Highway 97 to Osoyoos and my brother's summer home.
I'm taking a couple of days off and then I'll be back activating some of the local parks, before I head. into Vancouver on Friday.
It was a very wet night at Gull Lake, and the band conditions made activating the park quite difficult. I got absolutely soaked taking camp down the next morning, and was glad to start driving and warm up. Today I'm off on a trip through the Canadian Rockies.
My first POTA stop today was at CA-0005, Banff National Park. I made zero contacts in Banff as the noise floor was S9+20 at every spot I tried. So I gave up and moved on down the road. I was really looking forward to operating in Banff, perhaps next time!
Second stop today was CA-0117, Yoho National Park. What a beautiful spot!!! But of course it was cloudy and raining.
The band conditions, once again, were not the best. The propagation was: SFI=162, SN=74, A Index=9, and the K Index=2. Lot's of deep QSB on the bands as well.
I managed to get 11 contacts in an hour before I had to leave and move on to the next park, CA-0028, Glacier National Park. This was my first failed activation. I managed to get one contact, Ken N5HA, in Leesville, LA. That was it, despite calling for an hour, I had no other hunters.
Two hours later I arrived at CA-0061, Mount Revelstoke National Park, another beautiful location. At this park I managed to get the bare 10 required contacts, and it only took 34 minutes.
Personally I'm finding that POTA is very different out west from what I'm used to in the Eastern part of our country. There does not seem to be as many operators doing POTA here. Perhaps SOTA is more active here given the mountains around this part of the country.
It's also quite difficult getting a signal out of these deep mountain valleys, which certainly isn't helping my activation count.
Heading north from Brandon I drove up the beautiful Qu'appelle Valley and really enjoyed the great views. My destination today was Gull Lake, Saskatchewan.
My first activation of the day was at CA-0628, Touchwood Hills Post Provincial Park. The park is quite small, and has no facilities at all, but is a great spot to stop and have lunch and play POTA.
I managed to put 12 in the log while I was there, but conditions on the bands were not the greatest. Todays propagation was:
SFI=176, SN=97, A Index=10, and the K Index=2.
A short distance down the road was the town of Raymore, Saskatchewan, where I activated CA-2816. This was an All Time New One, never activated before and I was determined to be the first to activate it. You see, the number 2816 has a special connotation to me, it was my Dad's WW2 RAF Squadron number, "2816 Squadron, RAF Regiment".....so you just know I had to get this one!!
This "park" is a bit of a joke. I'm not sure how it ever became a POTA Park. Its official name is: "Raymore Recreational Site"....but is simply a 45 meter by 18 meter gravel parking lot where they allow RV's to stop and spend the night.
Twelve contacts went into the log at CA-2816, including my first contact from back home, Steve VE3PTA. Surprisingly I also worked Jose, EA1BUL, from Spain, who I work a lot from my home parks around Kingston.
The rest of the day was spent driving towards Gull Lake, Saskatchewan, and my next nights camping.
Another rainy day as I left Dryden, the temperature was -2C (28F). The road to Kenora was long and boring, miles and miles of trees and granite rocks.......with no 2m repeaters between the two towns. I was lucky enough to have the company of Rod VE3RYD and Woody VE3JJA on the Kenora YSF repeater for a while.
On the way to Brandon, my next night stop, I stopped and activated CA-2376, the Assiniboine Corridor Wildlife Management Area. Not the easiest place to find, but it was successfully activated for the very first time, with 20 contacts. Foolishly, I was in a hurry and didn't take a photo.
After a night in Brandon, it was off to Gull Lake, Saskatchewan.
Last night was not very enjoyable, today was even worse. After I grabbed a coffee in Wawa it started...with heavy rain like last night, combined with heavy pea-soup fog. This continued just about all day, I say "just about" because it started to snow around 1700 local. Yeah, the white stuff that should have been gone 2 months ago!
Today I managed to make a single 2m contact. It was in Thunder Bay on the VE3YQT repeater. Unfortunately I forgot to write down the gentleman's call or name.
I'm not equipped to camp in 2C (35F) weather, so I continued on from Kakabeka Falls Provincial Park where I was supposed to camp, and pushed on to Dryden, about two hours from the Manitoba border.
Needless to say, no POTA activations took place today, although there should be at least one tomorrow in the Brandon, Manitoba, area. It's a new one....never activated before, and I can't recall the POTA number at the moment.
I'm not too worried about the parks I missed today, I'll get them on the way home as I'm coming back the same route.
The Wawa Goose this morning, in a rare, rain free, moment!
Unlike my previous trips to the West Coast, this trip started in brilliant sunshine! I chose my departure day to coincide with people returning home after the May long weekend here. There was very little west-bound traffic, as opposed to the miles of cars returning home.
My only 2m contact to date has been with Bob, VE3YX, in Deep River. I passed a pleasant 20 minutes chatting with him on the Point Alexander repeater on Highway 17. I guess nobody monitors repeaters these days.
My first night stop was at Chutes Provincial Park just outside of Massey, Ontario. This park is conveniently also a POTA park, CA-0181. After camp was set up I managed, under very bad propagation conditions to get 11 contacts in the log. Between local QRM from RV generators and the QSB it was a tough activation.
Very early the next day say me activate CA-1329, Brennan Harbour Conservation Reserve, near the town of Spanish. This was my first early shift activation, and this was the very first activation for the park. It's difficult to find. Again, the propagation wasn't the best, and once again only 11 contacts went into the log.
The drive that day was pretty uneventful, not much traffic at all on the roads. My lunch stop was at Batchawana Bay Provincial Park, CA-0147. Things had improved and while eating lunch put 17 contacts in the log.
My second night was spent at Lake Superior Provincial Park, but the weather was so bad no radio was attempted. The wind and rain howled all night, luckily I didn't get too wet.
Today I'm off to Kakabeka Falls Provincial Park, outside of Thunder Bay. It is a POTA park, so I will attempt to get it on the air tonight.
There are 10 days left before the "Great Trek West" occurs. So far I'm on track to leave on May 20th. A few pieces of equipment have made their way into my gear box for the trip over the past week.
First up was a new 40m EFHW antenna made for me by Jim, VE3ULC. I had a commercially made version for many years, and I could never get a good match with it. I think it was made with the wrong type of core to be very honest.
This version is made with SOTA Beams yellow wire, thin, yet quite strong, and capable of handling 100w if needed.
So far this one had worked perfectly and has given me some great SWR matches.
Next up is a version of K4OGO's "Coastal 20", as made by Bob, VA3QV. This is an interesting antenna,
only 17.5' long with a 17' radial. I haven't used this yet, but Bob has used it on SSB and had QSO's with hams in Turkey, Alaska, and Hawaii with it.
According to Bob it works from 40m through 10m.
I'm planning on using this antenna with my SOTA Beams Tactical Mini Mast, and I will be using more than one 17' radial with it. This will probably be my "go-to" antenna while I'm camping in provincial and national parks on the way across, due to its very small footprint.
Today I cleaned out the back of the truck, re-installed the floor and carpet, and got the bed back inside. I'm having a small leakage issue in the corner were the bed is, so I have had to install a length of tarp along the front and side to help protect the mattress from getting wet.
I still have to get the curtains installed, but that will wait for this weekend. There is also a string of LED lights to put in as well for nighttime operating back there.
I'll do one more report once everything is loaded and ready to go. Once again I'm looking at following the Red Coat Trail across Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. However, having said that, this years trip will be dictated by Forest Fire warnings and their posted detours.
Against all good common sense I decided to try and complete my 100th activation of Lemoine Point, CA-5141, on Sunday afternoon.
Propagation wasn't that good, and the QSB was really bad, and to be very honest, it was probably not the day to do it with 10w SSB and a Hamstick antenna.
Well, Lemoine Point has three parking lots, and there was not an empty parking spot in any of them. So it was off to Parrott's Bay and try an attempt to activate CA-5142.
I ended up with 12 contacts in 90 minutes, and had to use 40m, 15m, and 10m to get those contacts. You can see from the contact map that a good proportion of the contacts were from the west coast.
Not a wasted day, just not what was planned.
Monday morning saw me heading back to Lemoine Point, CA-5141, in an attempt to have a successful 100th activation of the park........and when I arrived, nobody else was there, what a difference a day makes! The place was totally deserted, so I quickly parked and got my radio and antenna set up.
Like the day before the propagation was terrible, and I had to fight for every contact I made. Starting on 15m I made a grand total of one contact, after 10 minutes of calling with no response I moved to 40m, which was very noisy, and was full of static crashes from the storms in my area.
It still took me 60 minutes to get 13 contacts in my log, but the job was done, and the 100th activation was a great success. Many thanks to K1WIT, Shannon, who was number 10 in the log to complete the activation, and best of all she too was in a park, US-0324, so I received credit for a Park 2 Park for the same QSO.
I am still figuring out what the next POTA Challenge I will be doing. There are so many options, and that's the beauty of the POTA program.
Last year, 2023, I was the only Canadian station to submit a log, and from the results page, it looks like I was the only SSB station as well. The event allows both CW & SSB. CW is 5w, and SSB is 10w.
If you're out doing SOTA or POTA, those contacts can be submitted to QRP to the Field.
Just over a month until I depart on a 30 day, 10,000+ km cross Canada trip. This is the first of a couple of updates before my departure day. I'm planning on activating over 70 POTA parks, including quite a few that have never been activated yet. If you chase parks you can follow me on POTA Spots during the trip and catch a few new ones.
Jim VE3ULC, and I spent Monday afternoon analyzing some antenna systems to make sure they were acceptable and usable on the new mounts. It took a little bit of tweaking but all three of them look really good now.
First up was my 40m Hamstick that I plan on using on the rear antenna mount, at night, for my WSPR station. I'm not planning on using APRS on the trip, as there are currently huge holes in the Canadian APRS coverage map. Friends and family can log into the WSPR Page each evening and see where I have made it to.
The 40m hamstick was ok, but we still ended up trimming about 1" off the whip and it came down to 1.1:1 SWR, which is very acceptable.
I initially tried four 17' radials with the hamstick, but found that when I used just two radials you couldn't see the difference.
We also had a look at my Slidewinder coil, that I have never used before, and set it up as it will be used on
the trip. I'm using the Buddipole Versahub system along with three 33' radials to support it and get it off the ground. It tuned up on 20m & 40m with no trouble at all (I didn't look at any other bands), and I'm looking forward to making some contacts with it before the trip.
Lastly, we measured and cut the wire for a new 40m EFHW antenna. This will be used with my SOTABeams Tactical-Mini Mast. After trimming it, the EFHW tuned up on all bands, 40m through 10m, with no issues at all.
Later this week I have to start booking provincial and national park camping sites to make sure I have a place to sleep each night. Next Monday we will be removing the canopy from my truck and re-sealing it to make it water tight. At the moment it leaks in heavy rain, and I need to keep my sleeping bag and the rest of my equipment nice and dry.
This trip I will not have access to wifi on a regular basis, unlike the other trips I have done, so I will update the page when I can.
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