Winter Field Day 2023
Winter Field Day 2023
Winter Field Day 2023 - A Monumental Success
The club had an excellent turnout for Winter Field Day with over 20 members and guests showing up throughout the day for both POTA and Winter Field Day activities.
Jason VE3PLJ as well as Tim VA3TMA were able to work a distant island station in Northern Scotland on 10 meters while Ian VE3INP worked numerous station on the VHF and UHF bands from an Arrow J-Pole extended some 10 meters into the air.
The club had 5 guests visit, one a local ham from South Etobicoke and four of whom were from New York State. The group used Ian’s Arrow Branded 2M beam to connect with Yuri VA3GKX in Richmond Hill from their 5 Watt Baofengs.
John VE3IPS singlehandedly had over 100 contacts with the club working around 150 or more stations. and two of our newest members, VA3SNM Matt and VA3SQZ Jordan were able to try their hand at HF and make some contacts during the POTA portion of the event.
Club president Tom Stefanac VA3VWX would like to thank all those who attended especially the committee members who dedicated their time to organize, log and in the end produce what could only be described as a amateur radio event in the purest form where education, community and teamwork all played a role and accentuated the true spirit of amateur radio.
List of attendees, guests and visitors
VA3CRL | VA3SNM | VE3INP |
| VA3GDZ | VA3SQZ | VE3IPS |
| VA3KCP | VA3TMA | VE3TGL |
| VA3KEX | VA3VWX | KE2ABY |
| VA3MA | VA3WJO | Ariana & her friends |
| VA3PLJ | VE3AXW | Scout Leader Steve |
| VA3RSX | VE3FAB | Three Scouts |
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Archived winter field day activation details below
Saturday January 28th - Activation from 8AM to 8PM EDT
WINTER FIELD DAY ACTIVATION COUNTDOWN
The Skywide ARC has selected Colonel Samuel Smith Park as an accepted POTA site using either the park POTA ID or the Waterfront Trail ID. This location is both accessible in the winter and offers excellent parking. The club has secured the necessary permits from the City of Toronto.
The club is providing two large tent canopies, tables, radios, heaters, generators, coffee, tea and drinks. Other members and guests who are attending have also committed to provide heated enclosures.
Food is TBD (update coming soon).
Arrival / Setup / Timeline Details Below:
For those attending, the VE3SKY repeater will be linked via a cross-band repeater at the Field Day site to 446.200 MHz (no tone/ no offset / simplex). This will allow those with hand held radios to communicate with each other in the park and with those on the repeater simultaneously and vice-versa.
Club members and friends of club can arrive as early as 7:45AM for initial setup. Setup will require some physical labour to erect and enclose the canopies, move sandbags, generators, fuel and tables. Those arriving for early setup can park here – in the Humber staff lot temporarily before proceeding to the meeting point @ 43.594581, -79.514902 located on the gravel path.
The club plans to run POTA from 9AM January 28th until 2PM and will begin field day operations from 3PM until 7PM.
John VE3IPS and Ron VA3RSX will serve as our club band captains and help organize participants into different teams on different bands under the VE3SKY club callsign.
Club members can work together to log contacts using N3FJP which will be running on different computers. At the end of the operating day the logs will be combined into a master AIDF log and sent in.
All members are encouraged to take part in planning discussions on the Groups.io mail-server.
Club members and friends of the club ARE NOT required to:
– contribute anything physically or monetarily
– possess an amateur radio license
– possess a radio of any type
– possess an experience on HF, VHF or UHF
All we ask is that club members are willing to attend and take part in the event. Without club participation, there is no Winter Field Day.
Poll / survey results are at the bottom of the page.
Club members can share their photos in the member zone.
Overview map showing the field day setup.
Meeting Point is 43.594580951654784, -79.514901638065
What3Words: carver.
Red Zone is where the tents & field day operations will occur.
Purple is the location of nearby washrooms.
Yellow is public parking.
The green path is a footpath connecting all the sites.
Google map below – use it to view satellite imagery
Additional Resources
Fore contest details please visit:
POTA Rules:
Sky Gazing After Dark!
Get ready! 🔭
As the sun sets on Winter Field Day, weather permitting, members are encouraged to turn their eyes towards Polaris to see comet C/2022 E3 ZTE.
Several club members have confirmed that they will bring telescopes and optics to observe this comet.
From NASA:
Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) was discovered by astronomers using the wide-field survey camera at the Zwicky Transient Facility this year in early March. Since then the new long-period comet has brightened substantially and is now sweeping across the northern constellation Corona Borealis in predawn skies.
It’s still too dim to see without a telescope though. But this fine telescopic image from December 19 does show the comet’s brighter greenish coma, short broad dust tail, and long faint ion tail stretching across a 2.5 degree wide field-of-view.
In a voyage through the inner Solar System comet 2022 E3 will be at perihelion, its closest to the Sun, in the new year on January 12 and at perigee, its closest to our fair planet, on February 1. The brightness of comets is notoriously unpredictable, but by then C/2022 E3 (ZTF) could become visible to the eye in dark night skies.
