[TAC] Tonights TAC Meeting

[Hank Kohl K8DD]

For those of you who didn't make the meeting tonight .....
Stan and I were a day late getting back from Labrador City due to what I 
referred to
as a small problem along the way .......
Well, here is the whole story!

K8DD & AC8W on the road again!**

We have gone a lot of places (Montserrat, Saipan, Bahamas, St. Pierre & 
Miquellon Is., James Bay region in Quebec, St. Kitts & Nevis and now 
Labrador, Canada) to further our experiences in Ham Radio DX'ing and 
Contesting. Well, as ole Paul Harvey says ........ Here is "the rest of 
the story"!

Several months before the 2004 CQ WW CW contest, and after the TeamZone2 
group decided not to go to James Bay for CQ WW SSB, I started looking 
for some place to go for CQ WW, and preferably CW. Several emails later 
Dave Goodwin, VO1AU, found that we could use the club building and 
antennas (TH5 tribander, 2 element yagi on 40M, dipole for 80/160M and 
an R7000 vertical) at the Hams Of Western Labrador (H.O.W.L.) station 
VO2WL. Dave was also good enough to offer us the use his Labrador call – 
VO2AAA. So we started making plans for the CQ WW CW contest.

The Monday before Thanksgiving Stan and I took off for Labrador City, 
Labrador. Port Huron to up past Montreal the first day, got a motel. The 
next day, Tuesday, we made it to Forestville, QC (NOT the Forestville we 
know up in the Thumb of Michigan!). The next morning, Wednesday, we got 
up about 5 AM, and made it to Baie Comeau, PC (pronounced Bay Como) and 
turned north on the "highway" to Labrador City - route 389 Nord.

This road is mostly paved, but a lot of dirt and for about 550 km is 
some rugged, beautiful, and barren country. It pretty much goes along 
the Manicouagan River with 5 hydro-electric plants - Manic-un through 
Manic-cinq. The last one to the north, Manic-cinq, 
(http://www.amxfiles.com/stoneji/97trip/manic_5.jpg) is probably at 
least a mile across the top - one impressive dam!

There are food and gas stops along the highway - gas on the trip had 
been costing about 83 to 85 cents a litre. Up on route 389 it was 1.09 a 
litre ..... when you are the only gas station ..... The food was decent, 
and about 1.5 to 2 times what you would normally expect .... when you 
are the only restaurant .... The roads were clear, about 32 to 35 
degrees F although we went through some heavy snow and rain squalls.

As we got close to Labrador City we noticed it was starting to get dark 
about 3 pm, and by 3:30 PM we had a very beautiful sunset in the west. 
We got to the town and were checked into the motel, ate dinner, called 
VO2NS, Nazaire (Naz) Simon and made it to the HOWL (Hams of Western 
Labrador) club station VO2WL by 8 PM. And the temperature had dropped to 
around 25 degrees F and the winds were up around 30+ miles per hour. And 
it was snowing horizontal snow. From the time we crossed into Quebec 
from Canada (Ontario) until we got to Labrador - two days - we heard 
very little or no English - Quebec'ers, I'm sure, know some English, but 
they won't use it, so it was great to be able to understand what people 
were saying again!

The two stations we took were set up and on the air by about 10 PM and 
the laptops were networked for CTWin. We took our own equipment along 
because they have a Yaesu 890 (I think) and their amp (SB201) is broken 
from another group that used it. And all we really wanted to use was the 
location and their antennas!

We took Stan's IC-765 and MLA-2500 amp and my Elecraft K2/100 and 
Ameritron AL-1200 amp along with three laptops for logging and all the 
stuff to get it running. Stan's green Safari van was pretty well loaded 
up to the window level.

The call we were using from Labrador City was VO2AAA. The call belongs 
to a friend of ours, Dave Goodwin, VO1AU, from St. Johns, Newfoundland. 
Dave helped introduce us to the local hams via email and offered to let 
us use his Labrador call. Wednesday evening, Thursday and Friday, up to 
the contest, we made several hundred QSO's and made sure we didn't have 
too much interference between the stations. Thursday evening I was on 
160, using the trap dipole and I noticed that every now and then the K2 
would blank and take several seconds to recover. Then I heard an arcing 
sound in the tuner, and when I disconnected the coax I got a pretty good 
jolt. I dropped the coax and heard it start to arc from the center 
conductor to the shield - loudly! I looked outside - it was about 20 
degrees F, very low humidity, very high wind and snowing - snow static 
on the antenna developing high levels of voltage, so I clipped a ground 
wire on it and there was no more 80/160 that night!

When the CQ WW CW contest started Friday evening, it was great! One 
station running - making QSO's as fast as possible and the second 
station looking for multipliers on other bands. The conditions were 
quite good, although the station is located on the edge of Lake Wabush, 
there are houses to the north on the other side of the road. And they 
all use electric heat, so with a thermostat most likely in every room 
there are thousands of little transmitters! And the electric heaters are 
not the electrically quietest operating heating devices. So we had a 
pretty decent line noise, especially on 160 and 80 meters. Plus there is 
a lot of iron ore mining in the area, which adds to the line noise.

The end result of the contest was 3272 QSO's in a total of 105 zones and 
323 countries for a total of 3,048,216 points. Pretty decent for a two 
person, high noise and high latitude operation. The contest was over at 
2359 UTC (8 PM local time) and by about 9:15 Stan and I were in 
O'Flannerys Pub & Grill having our post contest dinner and celebration.

Monday morning we left Labrador City about 8 am and started down the 
Trans Labrador Highway headed back to Baie Comeau, QC in snow and wind 
and 25 degrees F. When we crossed into Quebec there was a large sign 
with lights for each of the stops along the highway. Two of them were 
flashing, so we turned into the town of Fermont, a mining town to look 
for the police station to see if they could tell us what they meant. 
Fermont was built by the Quebec Mining Company and is right across the 
border from Labrador City, but a world away culturally, the Quebec iron 
mining city of Fermont is a strange but surprisingly pleasant experiment 
in town planning. Almost all of the city's commercial establishments, 
including a hotel, stores, and restaurants, plus a large apartment 
complex, are located in a single kilometer-long building that serves as 
a windbreak for the attractively laid-out suburban-style neighborhood on 
the downwind side. Despite their close proximity in the middle of the 
wilderness, Fermont and Labrador City have different languages and time 
zones. We never did find the police station, but it was very interesting 
to see the differences between the layout of Labrador City and Fermont.

So we headed down the "highway". By noon we were past Manic-cinq and ate 
lunch at the next rest stop, 130 miles, or 220 km, from Baie Comeau, QC 
- about 4 1/2 hours to go! In the next hour the roads got snow covered, 
although we saw several snow plows it wasn't too bad. We got into some 
steep grades and going through some S curves hit some real slick 
pavement and somehow ended up sliding into a 2 foot high snow bank on 
the side of the road. The van then just kind of went over the snow bank, 
slid about 25 ft down the bank and came to rest up against some light 
trees next to a small snow covered lake. On it's roof. The first thing 
on my mind was a.) was Stan ok - he was and said everything moved and he 
wasn't hurt, and b.) get us out of the van! Since the doors wouldn't 
open and the electric windows would not move, I noticed that the sliding 
door window behind me was gone. So I released my seat belt - I forgot I 
was upside down, and fell onto the roof! Hit my head and got a cut 
(mistake #1). Then I had to lean the seat back - here comes mistake #2 - 
when you pull the seat handle the seat comes forward. Fast. Got me in 
the head again! We got out of the van and there was a man named 
Dominique - never did get his last name, who works for Quebec Hydro, 
that was behind us and saw what happened. He stopped and came down and 
helped us get some things out of the van (Stan crawled back in to get 
the keys and stop the ding - he bought a laptop back out with him and I 
said "good - at least we have the logs!") and up the bank. Then he took 
us to the S.O.S. phone and helped translate to the medical and police 
stations. He then took us about ½ hour down the road to the Manic-4 dam 
food & rest area, helped translate on the phone there to get a wrecker 
dispatched. Since the wrecker only held one passenger, we left Stan 
there to wait for the wrecker, and Dominique took me to Baie Comeau to 
get a motel. I got there about 6 or 7 PM to make the phone calls to our 
wives! Stan finally made it back about 11 PM.

Tuesday we spent all day trying to find some place to rent us a one-way 
vehicle to get us and our stuff, which was still in the van at the 
garage in Baie Commeau, back to Port Huron. It appears that no one ever 
moves out of that area and needs a one way rental! We ended up Wednesday 
morning getting a U-Haul truck from Matane, QC, which is across the St. 
Lawrence Seaway .... by ferry! We had a rental car that we had to return 
locally, so we went down to the ferry, got the van, turned in the rental 
car, unloaded the van into the 14 ft truck - we had a LOT of room left 
over! - and by about noon we were on the road. In a blinding snow storm! 
It took 9 hours, but we made it 392 miles to just north of Montreal.

The next morning we left there about 7 AM and made it 561 miles to 
Stan's driveway by 5:30 PM, unloaded the truck and got it back to the 
U-Haul in Port Huron by the time they closed at 7 PM!

It was an exciting trip! On the plus side we met some great ham radio 
operators in Labrador City, we learned a few new words in 
French-Canadian, operated CQ WW CW from Zone 2 and had a pretty good 
score, and – best of all - came out of a roll over intact, alive and 
with all of our equipment - and it all works!

On the minus side, we had to leave Stan's van in Baie Comeau, Quebec - 
it is totaled, and Stan now has another van, just like the one we left 
there and a year newer - didn't learn enough French-Canadian to do much 
more than point at the pictures in the menu, and caused our families to 
worry somewhat about our sanity!

Would we do it again? Sure - I would ..... not next week, but maybe next 
year, but I would consider flying over Quebec so I wouldn't have to 
point at the menu when I want something to eat!