VE6AB Portable Ops
Almost There
After spending 10 days around the house over the holidays, what with my daughter visiting from Vancouver, it was a given that I was feeling a bit antsy, and once the house cleared out of visitors, I loaded my manpack in my mobile and headed for the Rockies at the first opportunity.
With the new year (2018) upon us, early morning (Jan 2nd) just as the sun rises illuminating the Rockies in Banff Park, you find me on the final approach to a location where I would set up with my manpack that includes my FT-897D powered by the internal batteries and the MagLoop antenna riding shotgun behind the transceiver.
The air was a bit brisk with the temperature indicating -17 Celsius on my Kestrel portable weather station, a bit cooler than I had hoped for when I had left Calgary 3 hours earlier, where the temperature had been -2 Celsius.
Still, I was hopeful it would warm up fairly quickly as the sun hit my location, the sun still behind the mountain range to the east, although beginning to illuminate the valley just to my left and below me, as the sun continued climbing and spilling its rays on this side of the peaks.
With several good dumps of snow that has fallen on the southern Alberta Rockies over the past two weeks, that included the mountain parks, I figured that it would be a good move to bring my snowshoes, and this proved to be a true, as the snowpack in the area that I was in was about 80 cm (32") in depth.
With fairly steep slopes to traverse, I was glad that I was using my mountaineering snowshoes that include 360° traction frames with posilock bindings that include built in crampons giving good stability while going uphill or downhill or across slopes.
With another 200 meters to go, I was looking forward to getting rid of my manpack off of my back and getting set up, although I was enjoying the workout, what with the over indulging of good food over the holidays!
Although I had thought about including my 10-60 meter vertical antenna, I have been enjoying how the 10-40 meter MagLoop antenna that I built recently continues to perform, and with minimal usage in the mountains to date, I thought this day would be a good day to continue the tests with it under those circumstances.
Well, I'm almost there, talk to you on 20 meters!
Expand the photo for a closer look......
10-40 meter MagLoop Antenna.....
http://www.jerryclement.ca/MachineShop/Antenna-Werks/i-WHQvdc5
