Operating out of our cabin, approximately 7.0 miles northwest of Inuvik, NT,(see my link for info on Inuvik) http://Inuvik.ca/ ; www.nnsl.com/pdf/inuvikgolden.pdf, does wonders for my noise floor!! Being out in the wilderness there are no man made or power line interference. My noise floor is always at "0", except when I have to run our generator. Due to this low noise floor level I now prefer to operate from the cabin as much as I can. Out there I use a bank of batteries(13-14 VDC) to supply the necessary D.C. voltage to my ICOM IC-746PRO and also a Cubic Astro 151 transceiver and then feed that into the Hy-Gain TH-3jr, 3 element tri-bander antenna mounted on a tower about 30 ft high. I also installed an OCF dipole from MFJ and that gives me the opportunity to work on the 40 & 17 M band! This OCF dipole, depending on band conditions can out perform the TH-3jr!!!! I have been operating now since 2009 and enjoy it very much. I operate using the ICOM IC-746PRO as my main transceiver and use the Cubic Astro -151 as a back-up. I'm operating with only 100 Watts and I think that this is enough power for now. I'm trying to get into CW, but I think that it's a losing battle, but I'm not giving up! I use to copy morse at 34 WPM when I was in the Canadian military but that was many years ago. I'm sending at a speed under 10 WPM but with great mistakes! As they say: practise makes perfect and that's what I'm doing.
The picture is of our grandson Joe, age 12, who spent 5 weeks with me during the "break-up" season in the spring of 2010. He wanted to try his hand at operating the station, but a little shy in making his first contact, maybe one day he'll get bite by the ham bug!
Our cabin was owned by a legendary trapper here in Inuvik, Lawrence (Slim) Semmler, (see my link) www.nnsl.com/frames/newspapers/1997-08/aug8_97slim.html ; www.capekrusenstern.org/semmler.html ; and he was a famous trapper that travelled the NWT. We bought the cabin in 1995 and wanted to fix it up, but decided on keeping it the way it was. We added an addition to accommodate our family needs but otherwise, it's the same as it was many years ago. The picture below was taken while I was out at the cabin for "freeze-up", Oct 2009. A new deck was being built at this time, but it got too cold out so had to put it on hold - waiting for the springtime some 8 months away!!
I'm a seasonal worker, working with the oil & gas companies that operate here in Inuvik. I'm a senior camp supervisor working only during the winter months and that depends on the activity of the companies. With the halt of the "gas pipeline" there seems to be no work for me for awhile. During the quiet months I work casual at an electronic company as a radio technician. I guess one can say that I'm semi-retired.
If you would like a QSL card then please send a SASE, many thanks.
This picture is of "Slim" when he owned/operated the only store here in Inuvik.
This is a picture of our Cabin, 7 miles NW of Inuvik.
The picture is of our grandson Joe, age 12, who spent 5 weeks with me during the "break-up" season in the spring of 2010. He wanted to try his hand at operating the station, but a little shy in making his first contact, maybe one day he'll get bite by the ham bug!
