Club members gathered at the lounge in Centennial arena for the annual BC QSO Party contest. This is one of the events we regularly participate in as a club as it builds some team work, develops radio skills,  and supports our local ham community. Several members came out for the 9:30 am start of our session. Our first task was to attach a coax to the windom antenna that is permanently affixed to the building. The roof work on the arena required the removal of its feed line so we had to reinstall it for the day.

For today’s session, Hugh wanted us to use his IC-7300 radio to see how it operated and so he could learn a few operating tricks. Ralph brought his notebook with the N1MM logging software loaded. Once the feed line was ready, the radio was quickly set up and Hugh took first shift at operating. Ralph did a session of CW contacts and then Jim Wilkins operated phone for a while. Next up was Kosta and finally Eric. All operators had a good time making contacts and learning how to manage a run.

Eric also brought his KX2 and iphone with an FT8 decoder running on it. It is a very simple setup just the radio, a connecting cable, and the phone. He raised his regular OCF portable antenna on the arena balcony and then proceeded to decode ft8 stations on 10m. The furthest one being in New Zealand! He plans to use the set up for some SOTA activations where 2m contacts would be unlikely.

By the time we had finished and Ralph completed a further CW session we had over 200 stations in the log. It was a very good day of operating for our club. Everyone had a pleasant time at the radio and chatting when not operating.