I will be active on Bowen Island (NA-091) from 24-30 July using my home call, VA7DXC. I’ll focus most of my operating time during the RSGB IOTA contest but will hope to be on air regularly throughout the week with a focus on the WARC bands. During the contest I will be SSB only on 40 thru 15 but will also do some PSK afterwards too.
Bowen Island NA-091 (© Adam Jones)
Bowen Island is about 45 minutes from downtown Vancouver and is often incorrectly grouped with the more popular Gulf Islands. Bowen is part of the British Columbia Province South group, a chain which extends all the way up the Georgia Straight. Though there a number of resident hams on Bowen I thought it would be fun to combine a bit of dxing and contesting in a lower noise environment. As usual I’ll have fun trying out some new antenna configurations and of course downing a few cold ones!
Antennas will be wires only, supported on my recently purchased 12m Spiderpole. Space permitting I will have a fullsize dipole on 40m which I will then change into a 1 element quad for the higher bands. Rig will be my IC-7000 with the AH-4 coupler.
I’ll be entering the IOTA contest as a low power island entry which luckily enough restricts the antennas to 1 element per band i.e. dipole, vertical, quad. As an island entry contacting me will be worth a plummy 15 points plus a possible mult!
Hope to see you on the air!
