On June 28 and 29, local ham radio enthusiasts of the Comox Valley Amateur Radio Club will be setting up their various equipment in the field next to the Union Bay community hall for an active day on the radio waves.
Yvonne Higgs, a director of the Comox Valley Amateur Radio Club and an active ham, joined in 2019 and became the second female member. There are currently 74 members of the club, with two being honorary and three being silent keys, those who have passed but continue to be honoured as members.
The club has been active in the Valley since the 1960s, with membership ebbing and flowing. Old time members remember meeting for coffee at A&W for the club.
The ham operators are active in many ways. Radio support for local events, emergency support services, social contact, contesting, operating POTA and SOTA activities (parks and summits on the air), transmitting slow scan television pictures, flying balloons, communicating with satellites and bouncing signals off the moon.
“I was involved because I wanted to volunteer for the emergency program and I found myself on a radio ham training course and I loved it. I passed with honours and went on to an advanced license,” shared Higgs.
There is a lot of training involved in becoming a ham operator and you have to pass a 100 question test with at least 70 per cent. Above 80 per cent and you can qualify with honours.
“You have to have a fair amount of knowledge because you can’t sit on a radio and go ahead on the airwaves, you have to know what you’re doing. You have to know about the legalities, the rules and regulations the government has and what other countries require,” said Higgs. “You have to know about electricity because you could kill yourself or damage someone with your outgoing infrared frequency radiation.”
Classes run over four Sunday’s, each day lasting approximately six hours.
On May 22, the club launched its first mylar balloon to travel around the world. On June 6, they launched a second one. They have five in total to launch and keep in contact with. The first balloon has made it almost all the way around the world, back to Vancouver Island.
“It was almost headed back to Vancouver Island when it took a detour. It didn’t quite get to the Hawaiian archipelago, but last night it seemed to have stopped transmission. It almost got all the way around.”
The second balloon is on its way to Africa. It first did a loop around the Atlantic ocean.
One of the more important things that the club does is aid emergency services throughout the Valley.
“We have three repeaters up at Mount Washington and we use those for main communications with what is called the Island Truck, a series of repeaters up and down the island. Anybody on the island or around the island are able to access our network. Search and Rescue use it quite heavily for their home systems.”
There are new developments in the world of the radio club. They have acquired a new radio called a Moffat radio from an Australian manufacturer. It’s a digital radio that transmits our frequencies.
“They do go on a licence frequency so that emergency response coordination groups can run through them. The advantage of having this is that we can put these radios out in remote locations up and down the coast and they don’t need to be ham licensed to operate,” explained Higgs. “(A group) could nominate one of their people to be trained to use it on a digital basis and because it’s commercial, they’re allowed to be on the air.”
New to the club is the DisasterNet BC program. It is only available to Regional Districts and certain other specific communities such as isolated First Nations groups or small towns that are extremely isolated.
“It’s very exciting! Emergency response groups around the island and on the mainland and elsewhere in Canada are saying ‘Hey you guys are really moving on this!’ It looks like it can be very successful. It may become a model that will be used elsewhere.”
The Comox Valley Amateur Radio Club will start setting up their gear on Saturday at 8 a.m. with the goal of being ready to show off their skills by 10 a.m.. The event lasts 24 hours and will see the group dismantling their equipment around 11 a.m. on Sunday.
