Drone Fox Hunt Preparation

Club President and Technical Committee member Robin VE7HMN, at the May 12, 2016 Club Meeting, demonstrates the club 15-element 2.4 Ghz Yagi in conjunction with the wifi dongle and laptop.
At this demonstration, the laptop displays all WiFi sources and their respective signal strengths within an approximate one kilometer radius of the meeting site in the Piccadilly Mall Board Room.
The club has purchased the yagi and dongle–as part of its project to be able to locate the transmitter of a drone.
Hopefully testing will soon be conducted with drones personally owned by club members and then perhaps with the drones now being used by the Sicamous-based Royal Canadian Marine Search and Rescue group.

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SARC Trailer Tarped

Chilly, wet weather deterred the first intentions of the adhoc trailer maintenance crew, namely Ron/RLE, Simon/SLG and Dave/HDY,  in getting the SARC trailer tarped for the winter.  Today, with bright sunny skies, we gathered at Peter/RZZ and Ann’s, where the trailer is stored, and got a tarp over the top of our trailer to offer some protection from the winter snow.  We just hope that there isn’t so much snow that we have to get up on top to shovel snow off of the roof.  Thanks to Ann for doing that last winter after we had forgotten all about the trailer.  We will be more diligent this winter.  A summary of the job was completed over a hot drink and snack at Timmy’s.

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ARRL Field Day 2015

Well, what a scorcher of a Field Day 2015. Temperatures reached 36 degrees late Saturday afternoon and Simon and Patrick were sweltering at their rigs, one in the trailer and one in the tent. I suspect that these conditions would meet the ARRL’s objective of learning how to operate in abnormal and less than optimal conditions. The setup crew, consisting of Simon/VE7SHG, Tom/VE7AMM, Eddie/VE7ETE, Bill/VE7KDK and Dave/VA7HDY, got the trailer parked on the service road behind the gazebo and the antennas up. Bill proved a stellar marksman with his compressed air gun to launch the line over the tree tops so that we could pull the antennas up. We put up the 80 metre and 40 metre antennas on Friday afternoon but the 80 metre was swapped out for a G5RV on Saturday morning. The tent, generator and radios were deployed Saturday morning by Robin/ VE7HMN, Mary/VA7MCH, Patrick/VE7FAT, Tom/VE7AMM, Simon/VE7SHG, Bill/VE7KDK and Winston/VA7WLH. Fortunately there was a tree handy to provide shade for the tent but as the sun moves so did the shade and so did the tent on a couple of occasions. Saturday night security was provided by Robin and Mary, secured in Bruno their trusty Winnebago LeSharo motorhome. Overall, the site at the Marine Park in Salmon Arm worked well. Thanks to the City of Salmon Arm, the Salmon Arm Recreation Society and Twin Anchors houseboats for their support and cooperation. Thanks also to Robin for stick handling the complicated process to get permission to use this site.
Taller trees would have helped to get the antennas higher but the Club did get good public exposure. Although there weren’t a lot of people using the park over the weekend, due to the heat, we did meet a few of the early Sunday morning dog walkers at least. The Yaesu FT900and FT920 radios were used for this event. Operators were Tym/VA7GE, Tom/VE7AMM, Simon/VE7SHG, Patrick/VE7FAT, Robin/VE7HMN, Darrell/VE7IU and, very briefly, Dave/VA7HDY. From the dupe sheets at the two rigs I counted six contacts made on 15 metres, nineteen contacts on 20 metres and sixty-seven contacts made on the 40 metre band. More operators would have enabled us to extend our operating time and more contacts could have been made. Band conditions were good considering the recent solar activities.
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