VE6BLD 144 MHZ SSB horizontal Antenna install

VE6BLD 144 MHZ SSB horizontal Antenna install. We had a beautiful March plus 15 degree day to get my SSB Quagi antenna up the tower. Many thanks to VE6CIA Garry, VA6MPM Paul and VE6MIM Mike for helping with this rather difficult install. I have quite a few other antenna that could have posed a problem but we found a hole to pull up the 14 foot long Quagi and get it installed above the HF beam, 2 m Quagis, 70 CM Quag-v antennas. Garry climbed to stand on the top plate of the tower and then stood on the HF antenna boom to be able to reach above the 440 MHZ Quagi. He was able to install the new quagi on the verticlal mast of the 14 foot long vertical folded dipole I used for my commercial antenna for my business. He would have been reaching up to about the 63 foot height! The antenna checked out with a great SWR. Thanks all three of you for all the great help!! I should now be able to work Calgary and Edmonton easily on SSB simplex with the other weak signal hams. I an barely remember when VE6BGT Skip and I with Sarina’s and some other hams help built the whole tower and antenna 32 years ago! Check out the great pictures Sarina took in this Gallery.

After you close the picture browser you will have to refresh your page to go back( New problem I have to figure out now !!)

 

 

 

SOTA on Outside Magazine

Inside the Summit-Obsessed World of Ham Radio

RAC survey

Welcome to the Amateur Radio Survey

U of A cubesat rescue

https://www.ualberta.ca/folio/2021/02/u-of-a-satellite-team-pulls-off-space-rescue-mission-in-the-nick-of-time.html

Another Mesh project

Amateur Radio Operators Help Fill Earthquake Donut Holes

RAC Canada Day Contest

I just received this in my in box today!

VE6BLD RAC Canada Day Contest 2020

Winter Field Day Fun VE6BLD

I spent about 6 hours Sat and Sunday working the Winter Field Day. The bands were good until after 9 Saturday night. I slept in Sunday till 9:30 but managed a lot more contacts till noon.

Here are my results.

51 Sections,  38 States,   222 contacts,  1320 points,

80m, 40m, 20m, 15m,  6m, 2m.

I hope to see some more results from others here.

Bob VE6BLD

 

 

 

 

CW Ops

I was surprised and delighted to see John’s (VA6SJA) post about CW and that a couple of Hams are looking to improve Morse Code skills. Because of Covid, the last couple of months I have been re-learning Morse as well. Licensed in 1982 I was at one time comfortable at 18-20 wpm. Not having used CW in very many years I also had a desire to get back at it.
I found a site CWops, that has a great training system tailored to all levels of operator skills. You can self train on your own at any time or they have structured classes with interacting instruction (3 times per year, January to March, April) to June, etc) (https://cwops.org/cw-academy/cw-academy-options/) They use the Farnsworth method, which seems to be the standard learning tool these days. There are a large assortment of training/student resources for receiving and transmitting CW (Practice QSO, words, abbreviation text files etc, too many to list here. They also have numerous on air tests “contests” for students. This is a large site with many features. If interested have a look. This is all free, the desire being to promote the use and operation of the CW mode.
When first licensed we had a group of locals in Kelowna that would meet on 10 meters which gave good local coverage (even with a closed band) for practice sending and receiving.

73
Neil VA6AK

VE6WCE Station

Ok, so here is my story.

As per frequent requests to post something. I will post my station. Granted it isn’t the most sophisticated station out there, but it works for me.

The pictures you see are my hf/vhf station complete with a CB I had from the 70’s. CB, the cell phone system of the 70’s. I have three radios, Yeasu FT-5000 that I bought as a retirement gift. Yeasu FT-857 that I use primarily for VHF and an old Heathkit HW-101 I bought at a fathers day picnic and it works. I remember dreaming about building and owning that radio in the 70’s as I started to seriously pursue obtaining a licence.

Anyway I also included a picture of my test equipment and parts.

I had always wanted to go digital and as you can see my space is very limited. Then I thought why not just install a keyboard tray and laptop and so I did. Now you can see how I have digital set up. Using Airlink Express software and a SigaLink USB sound card feeding into the Yeasu FT 857 for digital. The SignaLink is sitting just below the FT-857.

I have three antennas. Cushcraft R6000, Diamond X-200 VHF/UHF and a 40m vertical that I can set up if I want to work 40m.

You may notice the antenna analyzer hooked you to the antennas. Before I transmit I always sweep the antenna to ensure nothing has changed. I also use it to tune the antenna as needed so I am not sending out a carrier to annoy anyone and stress out the transmitter finals.   

Finally Betty snuck up on me working a station or at least trying to, wasn’t successful that time. 

Anyway that is it.

73’s

VE6WCE