Please renew your membership by the AGM, 20 October.

 

if you have any questions please contact our treasurer and membership secretary Doug at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

A big thank you to Ian McLaughlin at Provision Data Systems Inc. of Kelowna, who provide data centre hosting services and telecom connections for our website free of charge.  This is a great benefit for the club and we appreciate and acknowledge their support.

Club records are a little scant, but it appears we can claim that in 2023 our VE7RSS repeater will have been active for 45 years.   There is a possibility it was actually 2022 so this is a conservative claim!

 

As a club we need to celebrate and publicize this incredible milestone.  NORAC has installed and operates the oldest continually operating and most heavily used 2m repeater in the entire Valley.  VE7RSS also hosts the biggest regular 2m net in the Valley.  If you are a NORAC member and want to interact with other members remember to reach out on the repeater from time to time.

 

If anyone has pictures from the early days of the repeater it would be great to get copies for a media article.   Please contact Ritchie VA7RLX. 

August 18, 2022 - Spallumcheen, BC

Mike VE7KPZ and Jane VE7WWJ finally got a chance to activate Thomas Hayes Ecological Reserve, park VE-5547 in the Parks On The Air programme. And what a lovely park to operate from on an especially hot 33 Celsius/92 Fahrenheit summer morning.

Aside from the open farm field easement to get access to the main park land, Thomas Hayes is a wonderfully forested (and thus shaded) nature reserve.

Mike and Jane hiked in about a km to get to the “lookout” which had a lovely park bench.

Mike’s 12m long wire antenna was suspended via some tree branches and coax was run down to the operating position at the bench.

Band conditions were, however, quite challenging. While the QRM was low, the band was very up and down, and mostly down. A total of 2 phone contacts were achieved on 20m in the first hour. These two hard-earned phone contacts required a bit of search and pounce (Byron KI5GNH in Iowa) a lot of calling (Paul NL7V in North Pole Alaska). Thankfully the keyer on the Icom IC-705 did all the work (automatically repeating at a set interval) and the DIY599 PA500 amp could take a beating (never getting too hot even with a drive power of 3.5 watts).

When conditions are this bad there’s only one thing to do to get the activation done: switch to FT8! Over the next hour another 9 contacts were made on FT8, bringing the total for the activation to 11. Ten contacts are required to have a successful activation, so we just made it.

Takedown was quick followed by a warm hike back to the car.

Reflecting on the event, perhaps next time out we’ll go a little earlier. A 9 AM Okanagan local time start is far too late in the day to be playing radio outside in the summer. This was also hinted by the fact that the parking lot was nearly full at 9 AM and we were the last car there at our 1 PM departure.

Here's a map of our contacts (missing Kazu JA8ECS from Sapporo Japan who is outside of the NA continent):

Big thanks to the hunters and Jane for her assistance with setup, logging and photos,
Mike VE7KPZ and Jane VE7WWJ

Ps: gear used for this activation:

 

 

 

 

 

 

The RAC, our national club, is running a detailed survey on many aspects of current amateur radio callsign policy in Canada.  The results of this survey are likely to influence any regulation changes from ISED on callsign policy so it is an IMPORTANT one to respond to.

 

You can find the survey here  https://www.rac.ca/canadian-amateurs-call-sign-policy-survey/

 

It's quite detailed.  You'll likely need 15-20 mins.

73 Ritchie VA7RLX