July 1, 2020, Island Lake, Aberdeen Plateau, Central Okanagan, BC
Jane VE7WWJ and Mike VE7KPZ were looking for the ideal RF location for a great DX signal to the Eastern part of Canada. A bonus would be to get some kayak action in as one can't play radio all of the time. Island Lake was an obvious choice. A great spot up high on the Aberdeen plateau with no mountains to the East and central access to the Dee Lake chain of lakes for superb kayaking.
Once again, the pair jumped in the Unimog for another roving radio/kayak adventure. However, this time the roads were not that tough. Taking Bluenose Road South from Lavington it's only about 26 km of gravel to get to the lovely Island Lake rec site.
There are a lot of other rec sites in the area, but Island Lake is the nicest. It's not cheap at $15 per night, but it's the most family oriented in the area and resembles a provincial campsite with level and manicured sites. The site operators Cam and Dean are great and wood is easy to find or buy (if you are so inclined not to buck and chop your own).
Arriving on Tuesday meant most sites were open. Site 26 was immediately selected for it's lake view and private boat launch access.
Across the road, 55 meters away was the perfect larch to set a line into.
Mike immediately asked for Dean the site operator's approval to put up the line. With approval in hand, a throw line was launched over top of the larch and this allowed for the high end of Mike's HyEndFed Field Day 80m-10m EFHW wire sloper to be hoisted up around 15 meters. The low end of the antenna was set at the usual 6 meters above the Unimog's camper via military fibreglass poles.
Incentivization by rain and mosquitos helped hurry the setup and soon Mike was operating 100 watts SSB phone via his Yaesu FT-891 in contest mode (the fan runs all the time so you don't kill it). Conditions were some of the best Mike has ever worked with 20m open all the way to Nova Scotia and every province in between (with S1 QRN). 40m and 80m were usable from BC to Ontario even with their high S7 QRN due to the weather.
Mike worked extremely hard until around midnight local time... and then took a little nap before starting up again at around 5 AM. However, with the last couple of days cloud and rain, and this event working 100 watts at least 50% of the time (voice keyer), soon the camper's battery was exhausted. In the theme of the previous weekend's FD2020 event, we had not brought the generator... so Mike switched to search and pounce mode, only turning on the radio once an hour for a quick scan of the bands to pick up RAC stations and additional multipliers. The sun gave a bit of light on Wednesday but Mike had to take it really easy for the second half of the contest. Fortunately, most of the work had been done the evening before.
In total Mike made 148 QSOs and found 19 multipliers for a total of 22,952 points. And this was without a 2m BC multiplier - the location of Island Lake is in a tiny bit of a valley so simplex 2m communications to nearby cities were not fruitful.
It was really neat to see how well the bands worked over the event - as skip length changed, more provinces could be contacted using the same bands.
After the event, Mike worked with Dean the site operator to setup and optimize his second solar installation while Jane did a little kayaking with friends. We spent the rest of the week camping physically distanced with said friends.
It was fun,
Mike VE7KPZ
NORAC Vice-President 2017-2020, Technical Committee Member and Roving HF Contester (until the batteries run out)