Mount Seymour

Ihave visited Mt Seymour many times over the years, enjoying summer walks through the ponds and climbing the summits to the top. In the winter I have done some snow shoeing and short hikes along the packed trails. It is a pleasant place to visit and not overly difficult or distant to reach. Today’s adventure would be with Ralph and we would be setting up our antennas to reach out to the world from the upper slopes of the mountain instead of the parks around its base.

We left my house at the regular time around 10:45 and made for a coffee stop and then the highway to the mountain. Today I was back to normal driving as my trial month of full self driving had expired. It was fun while it lasted but not worth the cost for a subscription. Though the navcom showed some large slow sections on the highway it was actually much better than displayed. There was a short slowdown at Cassiar but that was it. So, we made good time to the start of the parkway. From the base we could see cloud cover over the top of the mountain which could make it very damp if it was as low as the parking lot, hopefully it would be higher. Driving up the slope was uneventful as there were few on the road – all the keen hikers were long gone having been there for hours already.

At the top lot we quickly picked a stall and parked. There were a fair number of cars there but the lot is huge and there were many open spots. We then proceeded to wander the area looking over the possible places to set up our gear. The clouds were just above us though there was a bit of mist in the air, it was a bit cool but not too damp. There was some construction going on. A large pile of sand and dirt was slowly being carried up the slope to a spot out of sight. It seems funny to be packing dirt up a mountain! In walking around the area, I stopped to talk with a security worker who told me that she was there for a filming that would be starting next week. Generally, the area was quite empty only a few people were walking around.

Back at the car we loaded our gear into the cart and we made for a picnic table I had spotted where we unloaded my gear, Ralph continued along to the spot he had selected. I had a nice view of a small pond and unfortunately lots of flies. Once the mast was up and Ralph ready, we made our ten calls across the various bands to each other.  It went fairly quickly and soon we were scouting the bands for more contacts. I could hear very little on the bands so I picked a frequency ion the 20m band and began calling. I had a station in France come in and I had my first and only HF contact. I could hear some faint operators but nothing workable and after a half hour of calling I gave up.

After setting up the antenna I had checked the SWR levels on the antenna. It looked quite high and not what I was expecting. The trace on the analyzer was similar to what it looked like when the antenna was broken. Not a good situation but I couldn’t do much to fix it up there. After I gave up on the HF bands I tried some calls on my 2m hand-held and managed to work a couple of local stations. The first in Coquitlam the second in Parksville. So, I had a few contacts but not what I had planned for. By now Ralph had had enough fly feeding and decided to pack up. He had managed 8 contacts beyond our ten.

The drive home went smoothly and though it was busier and took an hour we had a good time discussing our adventure and plans for the next. Later that evening I started testing the antenna in more detail and discovered that the feed coax had partially broken near the end of it as it goes into the centre balun. So now all three of the wires coming out of it have had issues. I will need to solder it back together. This one is tricker than the first two as it is a coax cable and not a simple wire. But I will try.