East of The Rockies

Somewhere East of The Rockies

You have to wonder where the time goes when it seems that you are beyond busy and the day is not long enough to get everything done that is required.I had been helping my kid (Jennifer) move from her apartment into a house and so when a small window opened, I decided to take a run east of Calgary that would take me on a round-about way in to High River for coffee with the guys that I talk to on the Ham bands. I left home before the sun was up and after stopping for a coffee at Chestemere Lake, I still was in time to see the sun come up on a beautiful Southern Alberta morning with not a breath of wind to move the grain that bordered the 791 I was travelling on. Upon reaching Langdon I turned left on to Glenmore Trail and again found myself looking into a beautiful sky that had small puffy cumulus clouds floating above me that would add to any landscape photos that I would shoot on this beautiful morning. I also had another goal in mind on this day as I had been burning the midnight oil in my shop, building a eggbeater caphat for my mobile HF antenna. I had been running a conventional 4 lobe 24" caphat on my HI-Q 4/80 RT and was looking to improve on the efficiency. I have achieved my goal with my new egg-beater cap-hat fresh from the shops of VE6AB. I was able to eliminate another 10 turns off the coil of my HI-Q antenna when tuned for resonance on 80 meters. The egg-beater caphat gives me less coil wire resistance and greater Radiation Efficiency. I was quite pleased with the results with contacts made with various Hams across the US and Canada including a contact made with Jurek - EA6UN on 20 meters, who was operating from The Balearic island chain located in the Mediterranean Sea off Spain's Eastern shore. I continued making my way south past Carsland on highway 24 and down across the Bow where several fly-fishermen were down-river of the bridge working their lines along the banks in the early morning light. I dialed in 3690 mhz on my radio and joined the round-robin that consisted of a group of friends that gather each morning on this frequency. Before long I made the turn onto Highway 23 which would take me into High River from the east. Of course along the way stops were made for various photo-ops that include the photos posted here. I noticed this AG-plane off in the distance and wondered what he could be applying chemicals to as he would make a pass near the ground then fly a ways and do the same again. I came to the conclusion that he possibly was applying chemicals to the various sloughs to get rid of Mosquito larva. Successfully killing mosquitoes is based on a simple yet important observation. When mosquitoes become adults, they rule the skies. Locating and killing winged bugs is difficult. Let's face it: the bugs are small and the sky is big. It's like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Consequently, mosquito control that focuses instead on killing mosquito larvae makes a lot of sense. With the overpass that takes you over Highway 2 just ahead, I hung up my mike as The Heritage Inn was just ahead where I would spend some time before heading back to Calgary where I would continue with helping my kid move. Gotta love it. Later




In my lead photo I had pulled over to shoot photos of this old windmill that had a old waterpump at the bottom of the tower. I crawled over the fence and set up my tripod and camera for this photo. I used the timer to get away from my camera and not allow my shadow to appear in the photo, although you will notice the shadow of my camera setup.

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