Saturday, July 6, 2013

QRP portable at Luther Marsh

QRP at Luther Marsh... note one of Julies cameras
On Saturday morning Julie and I decided to take a hobby trip (Julies photography and my ham radio) we were off to a place called Luther Marsh. We have never been there before so we Google mapped it and off we went.....what could go wrong.....LOTS. This was a place that Julie was recommended to go by some bird watchers. It's about an hour and a half from where we live but they say getting there is half the fun.....and boy was it. Our trip according to Google maps brought us zigging and zagging all over the map. Once the road adventure was done we ended up on a lonely dirt road with a gate saying " DO NOT ENTER" Hmmmm it was time to bring out the Iphone GPS and find out where the heck we where. Well it was about another 20 minutes of driving  and we did arrive at our destination. We loaded up the camera and ham gear into our "hobby stroller" and ventured down a path in the wildlife
A view from below
sanctuary. We were not alone on the trail it was me, Julie and 
Julie's shot of the day an Osprey
deer flies!!!  We did have bug repellant  but it just had no affect on them at all. I was not bothered but poor Julie had at least 10-15 buzzing around her head all the time....and biting her!! We turned around and decided to call it a day, on the way out we noticed a path and this path lead to a lookout about 3 stories high. We went up to have a look and low and behold no deer flies. We had our lunch up there and Julie was able to take pictures and I was able to have to some radio time.
I took with me my Elecraft KX3, Alexloop, tripod and a spare battery. It was great, there was no noise level at all on the KX3 and one would wonder if the rig had a receive problem. I started to call CQ and it was not long before VE1AB in Nova Scotia  came back to me. John gave me an RST of 559 and we had a nice long CW chat it seemed that John had been to Luther Marsh several times when in Ontario.  I did have to say 72 to him as my batteries had to be changed in the KX3. I then called CQ again on 20m and WW2SUB came back to me.......hey guess where he was???? This was the first time EVER I had contacted a Submarine . He was on the USS batfish. I thought my CW was off and it was supposed to be copied as battleship. When I got home and did a QRZ.COM search....it was in fact called the USS Batfish!
Camera and ham gear stroller (mainly camera gear)

6 comments:

Dick said...

Hi Mike, ah yes, the deer flies. The Adirondack Mountains favorite pest. When they bite, you know it. Glad you found refuge in that elevated observatory.

Nice shot of the Osprey.

73 Dick

Paul Stam PAØK said...

Hi Mike, good job to be outside. I like the photos, very nice. I always have a camera at hand. Waiting for the right shot. 73 Paul

VE9KK said...

Good morning Dick, yes the deer flies were not good at all. Last evening we were looking into hats with mesh netting. It was very nice to had been able to get some QRP contacts to add to the days events as well.
Have a good week.
Mike

VE9KK said...

Good morning Paul, it was a very nice day that Julie and I had and always nice to have pictures to remember it by as well.
Have a good week.
Mike

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Hello Mike, nice QRP story. I like the stroller. For a moment a thought you were walking with a baby :-). Nice photos as well. And of course some quality QRP contacts. About the deer fly, we know these as horse flies. There are some that have green eyes and some have orange. Shure they bite, I fear them a lot more then a average bee. 73, Bas

VE9KK said...

Good to hear from you Bas, our babies are now all in their mid 20's but I do remember the days of rolling them around! We call them either deer or hoarse flies. There sure was a lot of them but finding the lookout saved the day.
Mike