L'ANSE-AMOUR, N.L. — In the world of internet, social media and cellphones, there’s a certain group of people who connect with the world with an old, but reliable, technology — radio waves.
They’re amateur radio operators, or hams, and there are many of them, and their clubs, worldwide.
Late last month, a group of them got together at the Point Amour Lighthouse in Labrador to send and receive signals while competing in CQ160 CW, a worldwide competition that challenges ham operators to reach out to as many other operators around the world as possible on the 160m band.
The group was made up of Dave Goodwin who hails from just outside Fredericton, N.B., Frank Davis of St. John’s, and Chris Allingham, who is living in Kemptville, Ont., but was born in Goose Bay, grew up in Churchill Falls, and whose parents still live in Goose Bay.
All three are avid amateur radio operators.
It’s the third year they’ve gone to the Point Amour Provincial Historic Site in L’Anse Amour on the South Coast of Labrador to take part in the contest.
“This is a hobby,” Goodwin explained. “One of the things we enjoy doing is trying to make contact with other radio amateurs all over the world.”
The competition lasts 48 hours. Competitors try to make as many contacts as they can in that 48-hour window, reaching out to as many different countries as possible.
“So, just imagine a huge worldwide game of tag,” Goodwin said.
Point Amour Lighthouse was a big attraction. It’s 33-metres high — the tallest lighthouse in Atlantic Canada and the second highest in the country.
“It’s fantastic to have a 120-foot tall support right there in access,” Goodwin said. “It made it very practical for us to come and put antennas on the lighthouse and operate the contest.
“We made inquiries and we were able to secure access to the site, initially from the Coast Guard (in 2006), but now the Labrador Straits Historical Development Corp.,” Goodwin said. “We are extremely grateful to Bonnie Goudie of the … corporation for her support for our operations from Point Amour.”
Also, thanks to an obscure quirk of the rules for this contest, Newfoundland and Labrador are considered two separate provinces. That made Labrador even more desirable as a contest site.
Teams in the competition use Morse Code and earn points for every contact they make. The total of points for making contacts is multiplied by the number of different countries, different provinces, and the different U.S. states they contact through the course of the contest.
Stations in Labrador would be quite unique in a contest like this, Goodwin said.
“There are relatively few hams in Labrador, even fewer who take part in contests, and even fewer who enjoy operating on this particular Ham band because it’s pretty demanding in some respects. When we got on from Labrador, we were the only game in town,” Goodwin said. “We were the only station in Labrador that anybody could expect to work reasonably during the contest so we knew we would be extremely popular.”
There are a number of lifetime achievements many radio amateurs seek, he said. One is to make a contact with every zone in the world.
“There is one zone, called Zone 2, that includes Labrador, Northern Quebec, and the eastern part of Nunavut, a place that doesn’t have a very large population, has very few hams, and it’s quite rare,” Goodwin said. “So even hams who are not interested in the contest might want to try to find us (during) that weekend because working a station from Zone 2 is quite rare.”
The Point Amour group had another specific objective — to make Zone 2 available, particularly to Japanese hams, he said.
“Because the way that radio waves propagate, actually working from Labrador to Japan is normally quite difficult and is extremely difficult on this one particular band (160m),” Goodwin said.
“There have been very few recorded contacts ever between Japan and Labrador on this particular band. I think there have only been maybe half a dozen historic contacts between Japan and Labrador on 160ms over all the decades.”
So, before the contest they were up at the perfect time to try to make contacts between Japan and Labrador (around sunset and sunrise) for several days.
“And we actually managed to work a couple a dozen of Japanese hams,” he said.
The official contest results weren’t finalized when the Northern Pen spoke to Goodwin on Jan. 30, but from what they could see at the time, they are No. 1 in North America, and they think among the Top 10 in the world.
This is from more 2,000 radio amateurs around the world who not only participate but submit a log to adjudicators.
“We were hoping to do even better than that actually because back in 2006 Chris and I came alone and we set up at Point Amour. We had a number of difficulties but we managed to squeak out a No. 1 worldwide finish.
“So, we came back last year and we hoping to be able to repeat that achievement. We had a couple things happen to us like a power outage that we weren’t prepared for, so we lost some valuable time there, but we managed to place No. 2 in North America and No. 9 in the world.”
GIVING BACK
Goodwin said they are so appreciative the support of Goudie and Labrador Straits Historical Development Corp., they are making efforts to give back, trying to help the site along to encourage more tourists.
“We’ve actually worked with Bonnie to help her create a permeant amateur radio presence there at the light,” Goodwin said. “We’ve established a permanent antenna that visiting radio amateurs can use when they come to the site. We’ve done a little bit of research on the communications history on Point Amour and it turns out it actually has quite an interesting communications history. There used to be an old Marconi ship-to-shore station in 1904 that operated there until 1966. I think that provided marine communications for mariners, ships at sea that sort of thing.”
The group has secured a call sign to reflect the communications history of Point Amour. That’s going to be available to any visiting radio amateur who decides to use the site.
“We want to give back because we love the place and very much would like to have people come and operate the place,” Goodwin said.
There is an annual amateur radio event called the International Lighthouse-Lightship Weekend, Goodwin said, where radio amateurs visit lighthouses just to activate them. It’s intended to attract public attention and to have a bit of fun.
“We’re very keen to promote Point Amour as a possible destination for people to take in the lighthouse weekend in August,” he said.
Scott Andrews, manager of Provincial Historic Sites, with the provincial Department of Tourism, Culture, Industry and Innovation, said the department is thankful to be able to partner with the Labrador Straits Heritage Development Corp.
The department manages and owns the site, sets the direction for visitor experience and so on, however, the Labrador Straits Heritage Development Corp. delivers the services at the site. It receives an operating grant, and both parties meet to discuss programming, visitor experience, and so on.
For the past couple of years, a recurring subject of those discussions included enhancements such as presentation and development of interpretation for the communications history at the site.
“This year just seemed like the time was right to move forward with some ham radio,” Andrews said.
Point Amour, he added, has a rich communications history. He’s quick to point out the site itself is communications history as that’s what the light tower did — it communicated to mariners that there was a headland there and to keep away.
“The site does have a communications history that’s over 100 years old.” Andrews said. “For radio communications that was a coastal communication station. The Marconi Company kind of had the monopoly on that for the first 20 or so years of the 1900s. So, they started building these stations at a bunch of lighthouses along the coast all over Canada and into the U.S. for ship-to-shore communications.”
Goodwin, Allingham and Davis, he said, had discussed with Goudie many times their interest in helping to set the site up to relay more of that information, and get a more hands-on experience around the communications history.
“We were more than happy to have them involved because they were the content experts,” Andrews said.
With the hams’ help and guidance, and the affordability of the necessary antenna equipment that was placed late fall/early winter, amateur radio operators can now bring their equipment and connect to the antenna. Then they can use the Point Amour call sign to make connections around the world.
“Starting this coming summer 2020, if there’s amateur radio operators travelling around the region … they can drop into the site and use the site’s call sign,” Andrews said.
