Hello, another perfect day !
Today i was on Mont Yamaska about 1 hour from home.
The weather is perfect. I arrived well in advanced because i was supposed to meet a ham radio friend who owns a lot in the mountain but i could not find him.So i headed towards my destination.
The access to the summit starts off by a hard packed gravel road leading to a lake about half way up. From there on i took a secondary road/trail wich is a steeper bu still relatively easy.
After a little over and hour i arrived at the peak and started to unpack the material and install everything. I took the time to grab a few pictures and after many many calls on 14342.5 at 16:51h utc i finally got an answer. Since i was ahead of schedule,the chasers weren’t yet listening in,so i wen’t hunting around on the frequencies and grabbed a few stations here and there…
I heard Odinn TF2MSN in iceland calling so why not give him an answer !
I returned to 14342.5 and at 17:45h W0MNA Gary from Kansas popped in and in the log he went ! but Martha was missing ?
Immediately after Gary spotted me,the stations started coming in and i made a run of qso’s for about 10 minutes.
EA2IF Guru answered my call and the conditions were still good at that moment so we had a little chit-chat,that was great !
My last station was NA4SO from Georgia.
After one hour on the air i packed up everything and was going to grab my binoculars to try to identify the surrounding mountains when a fella arrived along with his dog.
Hello i say, how is the trail i ask ? what is this wire he ask’s me ? i say: oh,that’s an antenna ! i was doing some radio communication ! Where did you talk to he says ? All the way to Iceland,Spain and all cross the states i says ! Well…he says politely: you are on my property and its private… doh.
He goes along and explains to me that the entire mountain is privately owned and that nobody is allowed to come in anymore…
There are other peaks on this summit,one is used by paragliders and they do not wan’t other users up there also and a third one wich has commercial towers on it and that generally means access denied and plenty of RF interference.
Oh well…i guess this was my last SOTA on this mountain.
An almost perfectv day ! but i still enjoyed it .
Hi Eric,
I’d be very interested to know at what time you contacted EA2IF and was that on SSB or CW? I’ve not been able to contact any Canadian activators so far.
The fact that you were told you had operated from private land - could in the worst case mean that the activation is invalid - however I think the owner effectively give you permission for this time “but don’t do it again”. In any case please add a note to the Summits page - here: SOTA Summits to warn other prospective activators that the mountain is private land and permission must be sought.
It’s interesting that VA2VL has activated the summit once a year for the last four years, so if Jean-François is watching this list, perhaps he can clarify who one needs to approach to get permission to access the summit.
Hello Ed,
If you looked at my images by the link provided in my article you probably saw my log wich indicates all the details about my contact with EA2IF and all the others.
About the summit: I cannot say i got the permission from the land owner before entering since when i arrived no one was around and the gate was wide open so i entered and i’ve been there several times in the past,talked to owners a few times and everything was ok to explore the mountain on foot. That was probably the case also with VA2VL.
This situation is very recent.
The owner of the summit arrived while i was packing up after my activation was done and it is at this moment that i was informed of the situation.
In the future unless a special permission is obtained i guess it could be impossible to return at this summit.
Hi Ed,
Our QSO yesterday was on 20m SSB at 18h21 utc. Eric was running 50 watts into a Norcal antenna and he was putting a great 57/58 signal on my S-meter.
I was receiving him with my Hy-Gain TH5-DX (3 active elements on 20m) at 15m above the ground.
Best 73 from Guru
Sorry Eric, that link was shown as “enter link description here” so I assumed there was no link, I should have clicked in any case. Very nice pictures, including one which says private track (Propriete Privee - Defense de Passer).
Guru has also replied, so it appears between 18 and 1900 UTC could be a good time for Europeans to listen for Canadian SOTA activators on 20m SSB (there appears to be 30 minutes difference in the time that you logged the contact (17:51) and the time that Guru (18:21) logged it though).
Shame on the access issues, but as long as future activators are aware of the situation they may be able to approach the owner to ask for permission.
There are many lots and many owners on this mountain so who owns what ? that is the problem…
I’ve been there a few times before (not on a sota) and have got the ok at that moment from 2 owners,this is why i decided to access the site even though i saw the signs on my way up,but it seems there is a dispute going on between the municipality and the owners for wich i was totally unaware of ?
So meanwhile i have put a comment on the summit description regarding the situation for other sotaists to know about it.
And,yes indeed i think in the evening (UK local time) would be a good time for the europpeans to contact us here in Canada. This is why is usually post my sota’s for around 17H utc.
There ain’t nothing over here on the bands in the morning anyway and it rarely opens now above 20m. The situation could be different for our close neighbors in the USA because they are closer to the south ?
Ed, i found it to be odd that the time Guru and I logged our qso was different ? because i logged immediately.
So i found out just moments ago that my watch is about 30 min late !!
thanks for pointing that out !
I’ve checked out the times entered by the chasers in the database and they indicate indeed a 30 minutes difference.
So i deleted and re-submitted my log with the corrected times.
Thanks. 73
No worries on the time Eric - I had wondered if there is a 30 minute difference time zone in Canada (as exists for example in South Australia) and that the conversion to UTC was to blame. It’s strange that your watch was almost exactly 30 minutes late, but that’s life as they say.
OK on the unclear ownership of land on VE2/ES-001 and I hope to get a contact with you sometime around 1700 UTC on 20m one day, even perhaps an S2S as I want to try some semi-local SOTA activations on 80m and it seems late afternoon, early evening is best for that, so I could combine the two (80m and 20m).
During the hike i had to take off the rucksack a few times to grab my water bottle and the watch snapped off my wrist and fell to the ground, i put it in my pocket and continued the hike. So either the shock of it falling to the ground or the trip in my pocket is responsible for the time change ?
I was able to put it back on afterwards but never noticed the time was incorrect since i obviously had nothing to compare it to !
