This year, for the annual Winter Field Day event, the tenacious team of Austin VE7QH, Simon VE7RIZ and Mike VE7KPZ agreed to do a self-propelled winter expedition.
Mike found a rustic little cabin in the woods and made a reservation for the WFD weekend. Located in the Larch Hills Nordic area near Salmon Arm, BC, Cec's cabin would be the perfect spot to operate from. The cabin is off-grid and has no cellular service.
The team needed a radio callsign to use for the event. Amazingly the VE7RAC call had not yet been reserved. Approval to use the call for the event was arranged with new RAC BC/Yukon director Hiroshi Takahashi VA7LET.
The team also needed to find lightweight equipment to haul in food, radio and camping gear. Mike found a tiny pulk at Canadian Tire on sale, Austin borrowed a pulk from a friend and Simon re-purposed a kid carrier on skis for his gear transport.
The Friday of the WFD weekend finally arrived and the group met up at the Larch Hills Nordic area parking lot at 9am. The 6km snow hike to the cabin included just 200m of elevation gain, however, with heavily loaded pulks/kid carrier, it took a fair amount of physical effort. Simon surprised all by leading the entire way in.
Upon arrival at the cabin, the first task was to light a fire in the wood stove. Then a quick lunch and on to antenna setup. With just a couple of hours of daylight left, Austin and Simon focussed on the BuddiHEX while Mike focussed on the wire antenna for 40m and 80m bands. The antennas, coax and guy lines were well marked as visitors would be expected in and around the cabin the next day.
It was also the right time to start snow melting for drinking water. Mike placed his monster-sized thrift-store-beauty-of-a-find stainless steel pot on the wood stove and filled it with snow from a clean spot outside. Soon the team (and other cabin guests over the weekend) had a virtually unlimited supply of water that could be filtered for cooking/drinking or used directly for washing up.
Sunset signalled that it was time for dinner. Simon prepared a delicious meatball alfredo pasta along with Texas toast garlic bread, all cooked on the wood stove.
For bunks Simon and Mike slept up in the tiny loft, while Austin chose to sleep on a bench downstairs. Controlling the wood stove to keep temperatures consistent turned out to be the team's biggest challenge. Temperatures downstairs approached 0 Celcius/32 Fahrenheit lows while upstairs saw peaks of up to 38 Celcius/100 Fahrenheit. Despite a couple of too-warm moments upstairs, everyone slept well Friday night.
Saturday morning started early with the setup and test of the radio gear. The BuddiHEX antenna showed high SWR on all bands - eek! Fault finding found the SO-239 to BNC adapter at the feed point of the antenna to be defective. This was quickly replaced with a spare and then all was good to go for an 8am on-air start.
Austin and Simon started working on 20, 15 and 10 meter bands, CW and phone, via the VA6AM triplexer and band pass filters with the hex. Mike went to work on making espresso and sourdough toast with fancy preserves.
As the day progressed, Simon and Mike took turns operating phone on Mike's IC-705/PA500 rig while Austin worked CW and phone on his KX2/PA500 setup. In a rare quiet moment, Mike switched over to digital and sent and received some Winlink messages, one of the many outlined objectives for the WFD event.
Cec's cabin, in the daytime, is normally a warming hut for the cross country skiers that enjoy the Larch Hills Nordic area's trails. What surprised the team was just how much interest these random visitors showed for amateur radio operation. Headphones had to come off every half hour or so to let the onlookers hear both sides of the QSOs through the radios' speakers. In total nearly 50 guests were exposed to the joy of playing radio.
Mike was able to squeeze in cooking a fire-grilled steak dinner with caesar salad and some more Texas toast garlic bread. After dinner, the team focussed on satellite work, another emphasized WFD objective. Easy FM QSOs were made via the International Space Station. SSB/linear satellite QSOs were harder to come by so focus switched to making QSOs on the 40 and 80 meter bands. Additionally a 2m simplex FM contact was made with Salmon Arm local and friend Peter VE7PAE.
By 9 PM the team was exhausted. Twelve hours of intense radio operation, with a lot of explaining for the curious onlookers, made for a very long day. A development that Austin had to be home earlier than expected on Sunday prompted the call to shut down the station that night with 534 QSOs in the log.
Saturday night was spent relaxing, exchanging stories and eating a lovely dessert of fruit gummies and Skor bar bites. The team slept well again Saturday night.
Sunday morning Simon cooked a fantastic bacon and eggs breakfast on the wood stove and then it was time to tear down the site. A much quicker downhill snow hike back to the parking lot made for an easy exit.
The entire team was blown away by the hospitable and friendly folks encountered at the cabin and on the area's trails. Austin, Simon and Mike still can't get over the amazing amount of interest in amateur radio shown by the cabin's visitors that Saturday.
Big thanks go to Karen, manager of the Larch Hills Nordic operations, for allowing the team to use the cabin for the weekend. As well, big thanks to RAC for allowing the use the VE7RAC call for this event. And finally, big thanks to Simon for bringing his new Starlink Mini along so that our YLs at home could also get a taste of the incredible backwoods cabin radio action over FaceTime.
It was fun,
73,
Mike VE7KPZ
Ps: primary gear used for this endeavour:
Elecraft KX2 transceiver with DL4KA PA500 HF amplifier
Icom IC-705 transceiver with DL4KA PA500 HF amplifier and TopTek PA-85V VHF amplifier
Kenwood TH-D74A handheld transceiver
BuddiHEX hex beam 20-6m antenna with Mastwerks 7m mast system
HyEndFed Portable Mini Field Day 80-10m EFHW wire antenna with Spiderbeam 12m mast
Elk log-periodic VHF/UHF antenna
VA6AM triplexer with matching bandpass filters for 20/15/10m
HyEndFed competition bandpass filter for 40m
Microsoft Surface and Surface Go Windows tablets running N3FJP logging software networked via hotspot wifi
Fun side note: Austin worked Scott N3FJP during the WFD event!
Power Queen 12V 100Ah Mini LiFePO4 battery (~80 Ah used for radios, amps, wifi and computer powering)
RoamSat Mini (Starlink)