NEWS:VA5LF/B is off air until I can find a new home for it. It's antenna is ~150m from a recently back into ham radio ham's tower and has been causing QRM.

Originally licensed in 1998 as VE5SMC, upgraded to advanced + code in 2001.

I spend most of my radio time operating CW and digital modes, especially on 30m. SSB is rarely used at VA5LF, mostly just the major contests and a few other times.

Current projects:

I'm assembling a station for use on 136KHz (Canadian hams now have a band there). To that end I've acquired a K2 to act as a transverter driver (and general use QRP HF rig). I'm building a simple transverter to take the output from the K2 and drop it from 10.136MHz down to 136KHz. The recieve converter section has been breadboarded and seems to be working. The transmit converter is now being built and tested. This project has been on hold. Hopefully I will be able to get back to it soon.

A group of amateurs in the Saskatoon area have gotten a D-STAR repeater up and running locally. It's VA5DR and it's running on 448.125(-). This repeater is linked into the ircDDB network and is running the FreeSTAR software. You can find out more at http://saskatoon-dstar.ca

The tower project is now finished! The KT34 is up and working just fine, and I'm one happy ham! I have also recently installed an Alpha Delta DX-B sloper off the side of the tower, which gets me on the air on 160m through 10m!

People who have been following my tower progress may be interested to know how things worked out with my neighbour and his complaint to Industry Canada. Well, IC came out and did some tests to determine field strengths and found I was at maximum 2.3% of the limits expressed in Safety Code 6. In other words, not even close to being a problem. Now that this has been dealt with, I am again free to use my station.

Affiliations:

Member of:

• RAC
• ARRL
• Amsat
• TAPR
• 30MDG (#1444)
• SKCC (#4507T)
• Saskatchewan Contest Club
• Meewasin Amateur Radio Society

QSL Information:

If you need my card, send me one and I will happily send one back. I accept cards via the bureau, direct (SAE and green-stamp appreciated, but not required), and via LoTW and eQSL.