Posted on by Maltose Kincaid

Main Duck Island

Over the summer I had the chance to go camping on Main Duck Island in Lake Ontario. The place is rather inaccessible, unless you have a boat. Luckily, I do know someone who has a boat.

The trip out to the island was fun. I normally don’t get seasick, but I had a very light brunch before we departed and the choppiness of the lake didn’t play nicely with that. There was some talk about diverting to a closer island because of me tightly holding onto the bucket, but I told the skipper to keep on going. No point in turning back half-way to our destination.

We made it and I quickly got off the boat and kissed dry land (clearly I’m no sailor). We were told the island is a busy place most of the time, but when we pulled up to the dock there were no other ships in sight. We set up camp on some high ground near the dock.

The view from the port side of the vessel

We spent the next 2.5 days on the island, exploring what it had to offer. The island used to be settled for a time with a lighthouse, school, some homes and various other buildings. The lighthouse remains but is automated. Not much else exists except a few abandoned buildings and ruins.

The lighthouse. The water was apparently quite low this year, these rocks are normally underwater up to the treeline.
Lightkeeper’s Home
Big ole’ snapper on one of the trails

I also brought an HT with me as well as my Arrow II beam to see what repeaters I could successfully hit from the island. Some good contacts were made across a number of repeaters. My Yaesu FT-70D was programmed with a list of repeaters that fall within 80km of the island. The results of my testing are below:

Near Lighthouse:

  • VE3KTO (Picton) – S9. Had a QSO with VE3GSI.
  • VE3KBR (Kingston) – S1. No QSO.
  • VE3TJU (Picton) – S9. No OSO.

West Side of Island:

  • VA3LGA (Lansdowne) – S5. Had a QSO with VA3ASZ mobile.
  • AC2GE (Dexter, NY) – S6. No QSO.
  • KD2CPX (Dexter, NY) – S1. No QSO.
  • KC2ELX (Watertown, NY) – S4/5. No QSO.

East Side of Island

  • VA3LGA (Lansdowne) – S9. No QSO.
  • AC2GE (Dexter, NY) – S9. Had a QSO with WD0DBT, heard me calling on another repeater and was waiting for me.
  • KD2CPX (Dexter, NY) – S5. No QSO.
  • KC2ELX (Watertown, NY) – S9. No QSO.
  • W2OSC (Oswego, NY) – S9. No QSO.
  • WB2OOY(Watertown, NY) – S9. Heard another station but didn’t catch the full callsign, possibly K3QT-, no response to further calls.
  • W2WLR (Watertown, NY) – S9. No QSO.
  • WN8Z (Fulton, NY) – S1. Very scratchy, no QSO.
    Facing VA3LGA repeater in Lansdowne, ON

    The furthest repeater I was able to connect to was VA3LGA in Lansdowne, ON which, from the lighthouse at the northern tip of the island, is ~72 kilometers. Granted, this is mainly over open water, but has been my furthest VHF contact to date, excluding any packet connections to the ISS in orbit.

    I had originally planned to see if I could do some satellite operations from the island too, but I had forgotten to load my UV-5R into my bag when we departed for Kingston.

    All-in-all it was a nice and relaxing experience with some good testing thrown in. I am hoping to get back out there again next year with more transmitting capabilities.

    Leave a comment