Monday, September 1, 2014

Some radio but a lot of photography!

On Friday (since I had the day off) I felt it was about time to take the Elecraft KX3 and do some portable op's since the weather did not seem like it was going to co-operate once again I operated from the car. I used my mobile whip antennas again and if you remember from my last post I had an error message show up on my radio ERR TXG! Well I tested all the mobile coax and mount  all seemed fine. I did clean the antenna mount connections and this time out all seemed to be well with no error messages. I had about an hour and a half of radio time. I found 20m to be dead with little or no activity I ended staying on 30m but was skunked with regard to contacts. The propagation gods were just not smiling on me this time. The rest of the weekend Julie and I took in the Canadian International air show. On Saturday we were off to Toronto Island it's a short ferry ride into Lake Ontario and in the past this was a great place to get pictures of the air show. This time around it was a good day to sit on the beach and relax with only a few good shots! The Toronto Island for sure was not a good place for photographing the air show as many other would be shutter bugs found out as well. It seems the flight pattern had changed and as Julie pointed out looks like they are flying right over our condo which also is on the lake. On Sunday we went up to the roof top patio on our condo and waited to see what kind of shots we could get. below are the results the cameras used are the Nikon D810 with Nikkor 70-200mm F2.8 glass with a Nikon 2x tele converter I was using the Nikon D800 with Sigma 50-500mm F4.5 glass. The RAF SE5 was about 2 KM's away from us. The C-123 was buzzing a condo that is about 1/2 KM away from us. So not much ham radioing this weekend but I do have Tuesday off as well and you never know I could have the radio god's smiling on me!
RAF SE5 flying past CN Tower
Me on the Island telling Julie I think I see a plane finally

C-123 buzzing a condo about 1/2 KM away

8 comments:

Paul Stam PAØK said...

Hello Mike, we are dependent of good propagation. But for professional shots you got the right gear. Very nice photo's. 73 Paul

Dick said...

Great photos, Mike. 73 Dick

PE4BAS, Bas said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
VE9KK said...

Good morning Paul, yes for sure when the propagation is down and you are qrp to boot then it's really not happening....BUT....having said that I have in the past under poor conditions did not to bad. Thanks for the comments on the photo's Julie and I had a blast on the weekend.
Mike

VE9KK said...

Good morning Dick, thanks very much Julie is showing me the in's and out's or her professional cameras. There sure is a lot to those things not your run of the mill point and shoot.
Mike

VE9KK said...

Op's sorry about that Bas I got a little trigger happy with the delete button...:)
Mike

MadDogMcQ said...

Hi Mike, we share an interest in more hobbies than just radio. I have always been a photography fan since being a young lad and spent a small fortune on SLRS and lenses over the years (mainly Nikon) and then a couple of years ago I decided to sell up my rucksack full of gear and get a SONY RX-10 Mk IV.

I gotta say, I have not been disappointed! I thought I'd miss all those big lenses, but the reality is, I hardly ever print anyway, so the SONY has been fine for sharing images on the web. Love it. I take it on all my hols - it's so compact. Not sure if you'll be able to see this, but here's a link to one of my Facebook Albums - VENICE...

https://www.facebook.com/armaplatesales/media_set?set=a.10217354166632718&type=3

Anyway, you got some great captures there with that magnificent 810.

All the best,

Tom - M7MCQ

VE9KK said...

Good morning Tom, very nice shots on your facebook page! Yes we traded down to the Panasonic Lumix mirrorless GH7 cameras. We have all the lenses (but a lot smaller). We did have the Nikon D810's along with all the mother of long lenses. We both enjoy this hobby together and then I have ham radio and Julie has quilting that she does.
Thanks for the nice comments and have a great week.
73,
Mike
VE9KK