06/29/2007 | VE8YK AND VE8RAC The Yellowknife Amateur Radio Society participated in Field Day 2007. Eight of our members participated and we all had lots of fun, mosquitoes and wolves notwithstanding.

Our summers up here are quite short and we had to deal with a number of unique conditions. Yellowknife is located directly under the auroral oval - even during moderate auroral activity. This wreaks havoc on RF propagation at all bands. Further, Field Day was only 2 or 3 days after the summer solstice - so there was no darkness and no real F-layer. We were restricted to satellite QSOs on the southern horizon and 40m and 20m.

Nevertheless we did manage quite a few QSOs down south (59), nearly half of which were in digital mode or CW. One was even a DX to Greenland!

Our Mayor visited our site and warned us of a large wolf patrolling down the road... I wonder if ARRL will give extra points for visitations by wild animals... 73s -- VE8IR