Hi folks,
I would like to thank the people who contributed to this thread. It inspired me to try 23 cm, and indeed on March 31, I managed my first 23 cm contacts from the summit of Prairie mountain, near Calgary. Indeed it seems to have been the first recorded 23 cm SOTA contact in Canada!
In similar fashion to most of the people here, I was using an FT817 as the IF radio, an SG transverter and a home-brewed bi-quad antenna (thanks Andrew VK1AD).
From the summit of Prairie Mountain I was able to hear a beacon about 180 km away, and was able to make contacts on ssb (VE6EN) and FM (VE6MB and VE6EN) into Calgary. I was not sure of the exact distances, but after entering the data into the SOTA database it informed me that VE6EN was 51 km away, and VE6MB was 48 km away. I was not able to hear VE6BGT who was about 180 km away, near the beacon, despite him using a 21’ dish and 700 watts!
I didn’t manage to get any pics on Prairie Mountain (it was snowing and rather busy), but I do have a picture of testing my equipment on the side of the road, east of Calgary where I could hear the Beacon at ground-level.
The Calgary Amateur Radio Association is soon holding a Flea Market and associated learning sessions. Two of the three topics are on operation above 50 MHz, so maybe there will soon be more stations to contact.
Ian
VE6IXD