VE9QRP

A fine Thursday night, only somewhat spoiled by a record-breaking mosquito population, and another "park" activated by bicycle mobile QRP. The photo above shows what I'm using to carry the equipment: a seat-stem backpacking pack, with the fiberglass mast strapped to the top. I thought I'd solved the problem of it falling off when on the way in the dollar-store velcro elastic straps seemed to do the job, but more on that later. I'd wondered if this park, being perhaps the most activated in Canada (spanning the whole country) would prove less popular with hunters than the last two, neither of which have been activated more than 5 times. 33 QSOs over about an hour suggests that's not the case, though I was beginning to doubt the endeavour after the first 5 minutes of calling CQ with no takers. Eventually they streamed in, and Europeans, too, including a QSO with YU9CF in Serbia. I've long dreamt of a Balkans bike camping trip; a Balkans bike camping and POTA...

  The POTA hunters sure know how to make someone feel like an old pro very fast. This second activation had a lovely familiarity to it: the easy rolling gravel roads of the Tantramar Marsh, the assembly of the antenna and station, and the continual flow of QSOs on 20m CW. Here, though, the mosquitos were more ever-present despite the grass being cut for hay.  The Tintramarre Wildlife Site of two weeks ago is a product of 1970's conservation with friendly support from Ducks Unlimited. (It seems Hunters from south of the border are looking for what comes from the marsh, either on the airwaves or in the air!)  In contrast, the La Coupe Dry Dock site purports to be a 17th century set of dykes and control gates that furnished a place for boats to be stored in the winter and to be worked on in dry conditions. At least that was the view of Webster, who studied the site in 1933. Barka's survey published in 1970 is far less certain: he's pretty sure we can't know either when t...