ARRL June VHF Contest

Last weekend, a few hams from the lower mainland took a trip to Promontory Hills near Merritt BC. See it on a Google map.

We operated single-band on 6 Meters from inside of a local telecommunications companies microwave site compound. Conditions were poor the first day, however the band opened up Sunday morning as we were packing up. We did not operate after 11AM as we started ripping everything down so that we could be out of the site before the sun set.

In this video you will see me operating the last few minutes of the end of the contest.

Here is VE7HHS working the pile up while VE7STK marks the grid squares.

As mentioned, conditions were poor for the most part, and we really did not really have a rate going until Sunday. Weather was interesting up at altitude, and it even snowed on us (on and off) for a few hours on Friday night, however none of it really stuck. Sunday, as is always the case, was our nicest weather day, and we had nice temperatures the whole time.

Our unchecked/ray log file is available here.

Photos will be uploaded soon. My next post will probably be able the 2012 Field Day event in Coquitlam or the construction of my FM Radio wide-band aluminum dipole.

Operators: VE7HHS, VE7FET(plus first harmonic Scott), VE7NEO, VE7STK, VA7NSA, VE7TL, VA7LNX, and VE7WNK.

Found: Old Video from Thynne Mtn Fall VHF Contest.

Safety third. Here is video of VE7HHS up the portable tower on Thynne Mtn. You can’t tell from the video but it is at, or below zero up at this hill top. This was the first, and basically only, blue sky we had for the whole trip. Notice how fast the clouds are ripping by!

Cornwall VHF Contest 2009

This came after the posting below. Here we actually made it to the place we wanted to go, and operated. You will see the towers and antennae that we drug up the hill with us, the operating position, and a wild fire that started while we were up on the hill. We called the fire in, gave it’s location from the BC Forestry Lookout, which was once manned. When we called they had no idea where we were; sad really. The second fire was most exciting as we were the first to report it.

Again, video credits go to Ryan VE7STK