Hi!

I'm relaxing on my flight back to Arizona, after a week of all things AMSAT and satellite operating. The Symposium was great, and I mixed in a lot of operating from many different locations in 9 different grids (EM79, EN's: 70-71, 82-83, 92-94) in 3 states (IN, MI, OH) and the province of Ontario. My rental car had 1395 miles from my driving, when I returned it at the Indianapolis airport earlier this afternoon - including a 6-hour, 400-mile drive to get back to that airport, which came after a similar drive from Dayton to Port Huron Monday afternoon/evening. I had written about my earlier radio operating, so I'll focus on Monday evening after the end of the Symposium and Tuesday in Ontario, along with a wrap-up for the trip.

Before crossing the border Tuesday morning, I worked two passes Monday evening from a parking lot near my motel in Port Huron, which was a new grid locator for my rover log (EN83). A handful of QSOs on two passes, one each on AO-73 and SO-50 - and a ton of noise when working the SO-50 pass. AO-73 worked well with the FT-817ND/SDRplay combination, once again. Since I was planning to be up early for the 2-hour drive from Port Huron to the EN93/EN94 grid boundary, I did not stay out to work later passes.

In between these two passes, I had an interesting - and quick - meeting with a pair of Port Huron police officers. As soon as I explained what I was doing, they mentioned that I was not on the Wendy's property, that it would close in a few minutes, and I was OK to be out there. They also said the Wendy's manager made the call to the police, seeing me outside with my gear and "waving an antenna around".

After a short night's sleep, I got up early Tuesday morning and prepared for my day-trip across the border. My motel was 2 minutes away from the crossing, at the Blue Water Bridge. After a 20-minute delay at the Canadian border checkpoint in Sarnia, I made some quick stops before starting the 2- hour drive. Among other quick stops, I saw the Sarnia Chris Hadfield Airport, and took some pictures. I met Chris at a book signing event in Phoenix a few months ago, and knew Sarnia was his hometown. I saw some snow on the ground as I drove north, left over from a storm that passed through a couple of days earlier. The drive was uneventful, and I was able to line up on the grid boundary for the obligatory photos of my gear and GPS receiver. After that, an SO-50 pass for a few QSOs.

There were a total of 3 FO-29 passes and 4 SO-50 passes during Tuesday afternoon. If I stayed later, I could have had a few more SO-50 passes, where I could have worked all polar bears, seeing how the passes looked on my tracking app. With AO-7 in mode A, I wanted to work a bunch of passes in FM and SSB from there on SO-50 and FO-29. I think someone else was up in this area not too long ago, but I still had lots of callers on most passes. A couple of passes saw only one other operator on, but at least I worked someone on each of the 7 passes I worked from the grid boundary. I worked a total of 42 QSOs from the EN93/EN94 grid boundary.

When I was done at EN93/EN94, I thought about where else I could work from, before crossing back into the USA at Port Huron. Four grids come together at a point east of Sarnia, near the 402 freeway - EN82, EN83, EN92, EN93. I covered EN93 earlier in the day, worked briefly from EN83 the night before, and looked at maps to see where I could go to operate. The four-grid intersection was off-limits, but I could easily park somewhere to be in any two of those four grids. I decided to go with the EN82/EN92 boundary, which was close to an interchange for the 402 freeway, and the road had a large dirt shoulder where I could safely park and use my radios. I parked, found the right spot for the photos of my radios and GPS receiver on the grid boundary, and worked two passes - one each, on XW-2E and XW-2F, with a gap of a few minutes between these passes. Eight QSOs on the XW-2E pass, and 7 more on the XW-2F pass. Not too bad, for only mentioning this on Twitter due to time constraints on making additional posts in places like this mailing list.

I had originally pulled out my two FT-817NDs, seeing that it had been raining during much of the afternoon. The rain did not start up while I was at EN82/EN92, so I swapped out one FT-817ND for my SDRplay SDR receiver and 8-inch tablet. I did not make one long RF recording, but stopped it when XW-2E went away, and started a new recording as XW-2F came up. Many of the same stations I worked up at EN93/EN94 were calling me at EN82/EN92, and I logged a total of 15 QSOs - 8 on XW-2E, 7 on XW-2F.

After a dinner in Sarnia, I crossed the border, went back to my motel room, and had another short night's sleep before today's drive from Port Huron to Indianapolis for my flight home. Even with a stop at a post office in northern Indiana to ship books home, I made the drive in about 6 hours. Especially with the Symposium Proceedings book, my suitcase would have gone over the 50-pound free allowance, and Priority Mail was cheaper than the excess-weight fee I would have paid in Indianapolis. The books will be home on Friday, so that is not a problem. This was the first time I had to ship anything home after an event like this. I had additional radio gear in my radio bag and computer backpack (more room with tablets instead of a laptop in the backpack), since I had planned on making the run up to EN93/EN94, so I didn't have room to carry the books with me.

I heard a lot of noise when I worked SO-50 from Port Huron on Monday evening. I chalked that up to the power lines and all the lighting in the area. I heard the same noise on SO-50 at EN93/EN94 Tuesday, and there were only the power lines. When I'm in Arizona, I have never heard so much noise from power lines. I was able to deal with it by using an HT as my downlink receiver for the SO-50 passes, still transmitting with the IC-2820H. I was concerned that the IC-2820H's receiver may have been going out on me, but it seems like it is working OK - other than being very sensitive to that noise. I'll check it out further at home, to confirm it is still in good working order.

All of my QSOs from the past week in 3 states (Indiana, Ohio, Michigan) and Ontario, covering 8 grids - EM79; EN's 70, 71, 82, 83, 92, 93, 94 - are now in Logbook of the World. I operated from many different locations, including the Indiana/Michigan/Ohio border tripoint last Thursday (15 October) and the Indiana/Ohio border west of Dayton on Friday (16 October) evening, along with the EN82/EN92 and EN93/EN94 grid boundaries in Ontario. This also included AO-85 passes late last week, which was a nice bonus, along with the uploads of data from the telemetry in the AO-85 downlink. If you would like to receive a QSL card for any of your QSOs with WD9EWK or VA7EWK/3, please e-mail me with the QSO details. If you are in the log, I will be happy to send a card - or cards - as confirmation.

Except for the XW-2E and XW-2F passes I worked from EN82/EN92 Tuesday evening, I have posted all of the RF recordings I made from various passes in my Dropbox space accessible at http://dropbox.wd9ewk.net/ (refresh your browser or press F5 if the folder/file listing doesn't pop up immediately). All were made using the SDRplay receiver, my 8-inch HP tablet, and HDSDR. Telemetry uploads were done after the passes, using the RF recording and playing that from HDSDR into the FoxTelem program. I hope to have the RF recordings from the Tuesday evening XW-2E and XW-2F passes posted in a couple of days. I'm not going to tempt fate and my Internet access by trying to do a Dropbox upload on inflight WiFi. :-)

Thanks for all the QSOs! It was fun to work so many passes, from many different locations. I also had the pleasure to meet some of the voices I regularly hear on the different birds in Dayton over last weekend - always a good thing...

73!

Patrick WD9EWK/VA7EWK http://www.wd9ewk.net/ Twitter: @WD9EWK

(at 38000 feet above New Mexico, on the way to Phoenix)