Traditionally held on “The Last Rainy Weekend” in June but for the sticklers for the rules its actual date is the 4th weekend in June…

This year it would be on June 22nd and ending on June 23rd

So what will VA3QV be doing???? Its safe to say that my Field Day Station will look a bit like this:

or like this from back in 2017….

So I plan to be operating as a 1B Battery Station from the RAC Ontario East Section (ONE)

The actual location has not been determined yet but there is a good chance the location could be one of the Parks on the Air location in the City of Kingston.

That’s the plan for good weather… and so far the long range forecast is calling for nice (dry). If the weather is not dry then the plan is to operate as a home station in the 1D catagory just to give out points to the participants

If you are new at this then the rules can be found here:

Years ago Field Day was considered a test of our emergency operating skills specifically to set up and operate a station for 24 hours and somehow it has morphed into more of contest with groups of operators putting up equipment that would not be used in a real emergency at power levels that could not be maintained unless you had a generator and an endless supply of gasoline.

I’m a little more primitive by setting up my QRP (5w of power) radio with a wire antenna and using a solar panel to top up the battery as needed.

I will have the option of being under cover (see above pic) as protection from the sun and/or rain most likely be needed at some time . Not sure how long I will be operating but it won’t be for the full 24 hours.

Overnight all I would be doing is listening to static and feeding the mosquitoes…

No egos to stroke…. Just operate and make some contacts with the emphasis of having fun and not taking myself too seriously.

Hope to hear you and be heard by you during the event

73bob

The weather this weekend was not nice enough (for me) to seriously consider taking the Portable Station out any of the local POTA Parks as I had previously mentioned. Although the temps were above the freezing mark I find the cold harsher now and it was a bit too cold for me to be sitting at a picnic table.

Now it was not as bad as the above but it sure felt like it so…

So my Plan “B” was to just operate from the shack and give out contacts….

So starting on Saturday (0000hrs utc) I started spinning the dial and giving out contacts to whoever I could hear in whatever contest/event they were participating in. Contacts were made in the following contests/event:

POTA Support Your Parks, Ontario QSO Party, Michigan QSO Party, Nebraska QSO Party and the Quebec QSO Party. A few Special Event Stations were also in the log as well.

All the contacts were given a 5/9 ON exchange with the Ontario QP Participants getting a “5/9 FRO (Frontenac County)”.

I managed to give out 40 OQP exchanges .

The POTA activators were really busy and I found (in some cases) hard to break the pileups. That part of our hobby is growing in leaps and bounds. I hope that some of the newer operators were not discouraged by the sheer numbers of stations calling.

According to my records I managed to raise my Unique Parks worked count to 2565 logged. Slowly heading towards the 3000 mark which is my next goal.

With the promises (would the Weather Person lie to me?) of better (warmer/dryer) weather in the next week I am still planning to give the Portable station’s new 17 1/2 foot vertical a testing out from the field. Don’t know which day (yet) as the band conditions have to cooperate along with a bit warmer weather from “Mother Nature”

Hope to get you in the log soon

73bob

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As always the CQWW Contests are a great source of entertainment and also a great chance to increase your DXCC totals…. This one was no different

This year I operated in a S & P (search and pounce) mode for approximately 8 hours in total. The rig I used was my Yaesu FT991a and the antenna of choice was my “Modified” Coastal-20 vertical antenna

I made 42 contacts in 22 DXCC entities covering 4 continents (NA/SA/AF/EU) using 10m-15m and 20m

I was able to contact stations in:

Alaska, Argentina, Aruba, Bonaire, Brazil, Canada, Canary Islands, England, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Morocco, Poland, Portugal, Scotland, Slovenia, St Lucia, Turkey (Turkiye), United States of America

Now if everyone confirms I believe that there will be one new DXCC for my DXCC totals, but also there should be a couple of new ones for my 5 Band DXCC which I am hoping to complete sooner or later but most likely later

More on this once the confirmations come in via either LoTW, QRZ.com or EQSL.

For now its back to Playing POTA…

73b0b

Words to live by…..

“If it ain’t broke….. Don’t mess with it…“

One of the things on my “to do” list was swap out the 17.5 foot vertical wire on my Modified “Coastal 20” antenna with a 29 foot vertical wire.

I did the swap and then came back to the shack to do the SWR testing and also see where I was being heard and what I was hearing….

First issue found is that I no longer able to tune up on 40m using the built in tuner in my Yaesu FT991a….

On 10-12-15-17-20m it seemed to tune up quicker (2nd issue) but I did notice that I also had to tune up more often as I was searching and pouncing. On the plus side the signal reports I was given (after asking for an honest report as I was testing the antenna) seemed what I was expecting between S7 and S9. I was hearing most stations with no problems…

After careful consideration I decided to swap the 29 foot wire out and bring the 17.5 foot wire back. The reasoning for this was as I do a lot of S & P at home, I prefer not to have to re tune constantly…

And for the record the shorter wire is working exactly as well as it was working before I tried to improve things… There could be a lesson to be learned here…

To those who are participating in the CQ WW WPX Contest good luck and have fun.

UPDATED- Mar 30 0118 utc

I guess the antenna works on 15m

73bob