It’s been a fairly busy June and I haven’t been blogging as frequently as I’d like so I thought I’d post a quick summary of things.

Since my last post, I took part in the Tim Horton’s Ottawa Dragon Boat Festival steering for the Algonquin College Singapore Slings. I’m proud to report that we have once again won the Mill Street Brewery Hospitality Challenge Cup. If memory serves me correct, this is at least the fourth time that we’ve won it since I joined the team. We also raised almost $8000 for the local charities sponsored by the Ottawa Dragon Boat Foundation.

Last weekend I joined the Ottawa Valley Mobile Radio Club (OVMRC) at their Field Day station (VE3RAM), which was set up in front of the Canada Science and Technology Museum. With the exception of one voice contact on 6m SSB, I operated several shifts on the digital mode station. There were a few notable contacts, including Igor (RU6CH) in Russia and two French stations that I chatted with around 2am while the bands were dead. The 30m contacts didn’t earn us any points, but it was nice to have an actual conversation and I even got to use my French. 🙂 Last I heard, the digital station made 188 contacts, which is respectable. I think we were the only ones at the OVMRC Field Day to operate the full 24 hours — some people wimped out an actually slept!

Other than that I’ve been to the climbing gym a couple of times and I’m looking forward to getting out on real rock as soon as my climbing buddies and I can find a mutually convenient time.

As far as what I’m doing for Canada Day, that’s still in the air (and yes, I do realize it’s June 30th!). The options include heading downtown with the mobs of people to Parliament Hill, heading to Kemptville to watch fireworks there or escape the city to the lake for the weekend. All have their merits, so I remain undecided.