JOTA/JOTI 2025
This year, over 200 Scouts and Leaders gathered together in the Joe Rich area for the annual JOTA/JOTI (Jamboree on the Air/Jamboree on the Internet). This weekend's world wide event, held every year on the third week of October, is the largest digital and radio event for Scouting, promoting friendship and global citizenship. Once again, Howard PWF, Lorne LWK and Mike KPZ volunteered to help with the Ham radio demonstration. Unfortunately Mike had to leave early for a medical situation so Lorne LWK stepped in to help with HF. Howard, as in previous years, tuned into C4FM making contacts as far away Great Britain and Alaska. This years connection to the C4FM node on Okanagan Mountain worked flawlessly thanks to Fred from OCARC. The highlights for Lorne on HF was contacting the Battleship Missouri on 17m stationed at Pearl Harbour and chatting with a couple on a SOTA mountain top in Northern California. The weather was so so but the food was great and fun was had all.
223 Red Lion Squadron Royal Canadian Air Cadets
In October, NORAC was contacted by the Air Cadets asking for a demonstration for those Cadets interested in obtaining their Ham Radio license. On December 4th 2025, Howard PWF and Colin EEH set up a number of antennas and radios up at the DND G20 building in Vernon. The building is a large metal structure, so to help with making contacts, Colin set up his cool DX Commander outside. Fortunately, it wasn't too cold. There were approximately 50 Cadets in attendance. Topics covered were various types of radios and antennas. NVIS was also discussed for military applications. Hopefully this will spark lots of interest in the hobby.
There are numerous free online magazines covering amateur radio that I enjoy. Here are a couple:-
SWR Magazine is a general interest ham radio magazine covering a broad range of topics at a high level. It's published from the Caribbean region and available in both English and Spanish. Sign up for free at this web address https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeNvfE0Q26iq-ZwzQ6ccsmhFvDJJiZ4ognUNw6FL75W-8K1ig/viewform?usp=header or search for the news entry on QRZ.COM
The Communicator is a well respected ham radio magazine published by BC's Surrey Amateur Radio Communications Society. It includes both general interest and in-depth technical articles. You can subscribe at this web address https://www.ve7sar.net/communicator
Are you a member of the RAC as well as NORAC? If you are, remember you get a discount at the Radio Society of Great Britain bookstore! It has a wide variety of books on ham radio - both on current topics and the history of radio. The bookstore link is https://www.rsgbshop.org/ and you can find the discount code in a small ad in any recent copy of the RAC's The Canadian Amateur magazine.
Enjoy ... 73 VA7RLX
Late September 2025 Mike VE7KPZ and Jane VE7WWJ were offroading just south of Golden BC. On the must see list was the Jubilee fire lookout atop the 1680m Jubilee Mountain.
The road to access the mountaintop lookout was in great shape but included some extremely large water bars. Of course this was nothing for Mike and Jane's Unimog, affectionately named Ellie.
Once at the summit, camp was set up, dinner cooked and eaten, and then off to bed.
The next morning Mike looked in the SOTA Goat app on his phone and found that Jubilee Mountain was in fact in the SOTA system, ready to be activated for the first time. A recent SOTA mapping update of the VE7/CP region by Paul VA6MPM Mower had added the peak with designation VE7/CP-087. Thanks Paul!
While Jane (and Tao the dog) slept in, Mike climbed the lookout tower and setup his station. For this activation he would employ his QRP Labs QMX feeding an EFHW wire antenna hung from the lookout's railing. iFTX on Mike's phone would facilitate FT8 QSOs with 11 stations across North America on the 20m band.
As the sun rose above the Eastern side of the Rocky Mountain trench, Mike had to stop operating for a bit to take some photos (only one phone to either operate with or take photos with). He then continued on as there were quite the number of chasers still waiting for QSOs.
While drive-up summits aren't really the preferred way to activate SOTA, for those with mobility issues (and a good 4x4 vehicle) summits like these are a great option. You only need to walk a short distance from your vehicle up the lookout tower or over to the viewpoint bench for some great operating positions inside the summit activation zone. Visit this one.
It was fun,
73,
Mike VE7KPZ with Jane VE7WWJ, Tao the dog and Ellie the Unimog
Field Day 2025 took place at Silver Star Mountain Resort in parking lot E at an altitude of 1,600m (about 5,200 ft). This gave great take off for our antennas in all directions except due north... and we needed all the help we could get given marginal HF propagation conditions at times during the event!
First, the club's sincere thanks to Ginny Scott, Local Sales Manager at SSMR, for pulling everything together for us and doing an excellent job of hosting the club. We had exclusive use of lot E for the club and visiting members, plus free access to the showers in the village. Very much appreciated.
Views from the location were amazing. You can find a selection of some of the photos taken at this link (hosted on the club's Google account) https://photos.app.goo.gl/cA3H5JidHte1HJPj7
Campers assembled starting as early as the Thursday evening with the majority arriving on Friday evening. Campers included Howard VA7PWF, Colin VA7EEH, Lorne VE7LWK, Simon VE7RIZ, Jerome VE7JAR. Jane VE7WWJ and Mike VE7KPZ also camped with the club for the Friday night. VA7EEH, VA7PWF and VA7RLX arrived early on the Thursday afternoon and enjoyed supper at the resort's Red Antler pub.
There were the usual ups and downs getting Cranky, the club's trailer-mounted telescopic mast, properly set up and operational. But within a couple of hours everything was working just fine although we did discover a coax cable failure as the event progressed. VE7RIZ provided wireless internet which was accessible in most of the camping area and took some wonderful photos and drone shots. Unfortunately we don't have room on our Google drive for the movies as well.
Operators included Simon VE7RIZ (a guest who lives in Merritt) , Jerome VE7JAR, Ritchie VA7RLX, Brad VE7WBM, Warren VA7WPX, Felix VA7VOL, Howard VA7PWF and Lorne VE7LWK. Day visitors who dropped in to show support and help eat the great lunch included club members Gary VE7GCP, David VA7SK, Brad VE7WBM and Doug VA7CPS. Multiple guests from OCARC arrived, which was fantastic, including former NORAC member Doug VE7VZ.
Colin VA7EEH and Howard VA7PWF were the stars of the show and planned and organized pretty much everything for the club. Howard provided a great operations tent and Colin did a lot of work getting the laptops and N3FJP logging software working through the event. THANK YOU BOTH VERY MUCH.
Jerome VE7JAR and family enjoyed some mountain biking and Jerome tackled and survived the challenging Beowulf trail. Ritchie VA7RLX enjoyed a couple of hikes and only had one wildlife encounter with a very friendly golden retriever and its owner. However early on the Sunday morning a large black bear did wander across the campsite and disembowelled the garbage can pretty effectively. That bear knew how to take apart so-called bearproof garbage cans!
The club had decided this would be a fun event but for those interested we completed 394 contacts in total. 4 CW, 28 FT8 and 362 SSB. We operated on 80 through 10m. CQs were sent out on 6m but no contacts resulted. All those who attended thoroughly enjoyed the mountain location and low noise operating conditions.