While waiting for some food in a mall recently, I came upon this little gem. Proof that Queen E. is still alive! Made me giggle a bit when I saw it.
Random Sighting
GSI Coffee Rocket UPDATE
Took this magical thing out camping with me a few weeks ago. Did as it was supposed to do during the 10 degree mornings without any issues, nice and hot!
And here’s a bonus pic of what I use to make the go-juice happen. Nothing fancy, and just works.
Maxpedition Colossus Revival
This piece of kit had been sitting in tropical storage for 4 years. It, and some other gear, was unfortunately the target of a massive amount of mildew during that time.
I was worried that I would end up losing the versipack. I had a three-day assault pack made by Tactical Tailor that I ended up ditching that was stored with this bag because it was much worse shape (the Colossus was stored inside the pack). The Colossus went back to Canada with me slung across my body. The smell was overpowering at times. When I got home, I just let it sit for a few months to see if the smell would lessen. It didn’t. Eventually I purchased some Borax and mixed it with a sink full of hot water and went to town scrubbing every piece of the bag, both inside and out. It took a few hours, but it was way better than it looked when I had recovered it. The smell had mostly abated, but was still noticeable. With a big camping trip coming up, I purchased a pack of cedar balls and tossed them in every pocket of the bag in the hopes that it would fix the remaining scent. This seemingly worked and the rest of the smell was gone after a week in the outdoors.
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.
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.
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.
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.
RAM Stubby Mount Update
As the months rolled by since first modding the RAM Stubby cup holder mount, the rubber fins on the mount began to give up on their job of preventing the thing from sliding around. As a result, the mount began to tip over whenever it was in use. This is not optimal so I fixed it!
I had some closed cell foam kicking around and cut two small blocks out of it and wedged them between three of the rubber fins. The blocks are a bit thicker than the gaps between the mount and the cup holder. This is holding everything as it should and is now capable of holding 2 HT’s without falling over while cornering. The added benefit is that I can still move the mount between vehicles if needed as the blocks can be re-positioned or removed if necessary.
First Satellite Contact
I made my first satellite contact during a pass of the AO-27 satellite (EYESAT-1) on December 29, 2021. This was my first attempt at satellite work and was marginally successful. I could hear the traffic on the satellite and was able to hear and be heard by another station (N2FYA), although I did have issues on my end with properly receiving. The audio was very hit or miss which could be from me not being able to match my satellite antenna with the satellites antenna polarity (they do tumble through space), but I believe is mainly from my connection from the radio to my earbuds.
I had my Wouxun KG-UVD1P hooked up as my receive radio mounted to the antenna boom feeding my Olympus voice recorder with a 2.5mm to 3.5mm aux. cable which then had a set of earbuds attached. I’m thinking that the aux. cable being near some of the antenna elements may have allowed RF interference to affect the received signal. I have since added some ferrite beads to the aux. cable in the hopes of reducing any RFI in the future.
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