International Lighthouse and Lightship Weekend

This past Sunday, August 21st, we activated two lighthouses as our last big project of what has been a busy summer for us. The first Lighthouse was Nine Mile Point on Simcoe Island - CA-0031. This is the second year in a row we have activated both Simcoe Island and Nine Mile Point Lighthouse.

The weather was pretty bad when we met at The Star Diner on Princess Street for breakfast (as we do every Sunday morning at 0730), lots of thunder, lightening and the rain was coming down by the bucket load.

George VE3SIQ, Dave VA3ORP, Martin VA3AKY, and Dave VE3DZE drove over to Simcoe Island via Wolfe Island and taking two ferries. The Simcoe Island ferry is an interesting ride. It's a three car capacity cable ferry, and it's a pretty smooth operation.  The ferry runs until the ice gets too thick for it, and then they use the slips at each end to drive vehicles over the ice.

Once at the lighthouse they asked for, and received permission to operate right by the lighthouse.  It's a beautiful spot, right at the entrance to the St. Lawrence Seaway. 

The group operated three stations, all using the groups VE3FRG callsign.  One on 40m, another on 20m, and the third was a VHF station on both 2m and 6m.

Unfortunately we could not establish a link between the other half of our group who where set up at at the second lighthouse we were activating, Point Petre Lighthouse - CA-0026 , 59 Kms away at the South-West tip of Prince Edward County.  We had hoped to set up a 6m and/or a 2m link with them.

We made a good number of contacts, including a couple of lighthouses in the USA.  Band conditions were OK, but lots of QSB on 20m which made things a bit difficult for us. 

We did hear VE3FCT at the Point Petre Lighthouse a couple of times on HF, but they never heard us.

All in all it was a good activation, and we had a good workout for our portable radios and antenna systems.  It's a shame the weather didn't cooperate a bit better, but we managed to work around it.  I guess you can't have perfect weather all the time !

Many thanks to the families who live at Nine Mile Point Lighthouse for allowing us to interupt their normal quiet Sunday morning.  We greatly appreciated their kindness in allowing us onto their private property. 

To be able to read what the other half of the group did at Point Petre Lighthouse, click HERE.

Dave VA3ORP

Dave's Cave