Now THAT was FUN!  The North Shore ARC recently participated  in the Ontario Regiment Museum’s Aquino Tank Weekend.  The Aquino Tank Weekend comprises of both static and moving displays by the museum, other military museums and private collections.  As well, there are several re-enactments daily of battles during various wars.  Does it ever cause a lot of QRM!  We were on the air from Friday, Sep 17 to Sunday, Sep 19 from 9am to 5pm EST.  A WWII communications vehicle was put at our location in Airmen’s Park.  This vehicle, a Chevrolet, was actually built here in Oshawa, ON at our General Motors plant.  Even more interesting is that this vehicles serial number is 00001.  The very first one off the line.

For the most part we operated on HF using SSB, FT8 and SSB.  Unfortunately, the band conditions were abysmal on Friday but picked up a bit on Saturday when 40m came alive and 20m came in and out.  On Sunday it was mainly back to 40m as 20m had died away again.  Regardless, we made over 450 contacts from Airmen’s Park, POTA site VE-5535, and had a lot of funchatting with those who were chasing us on the air and stopping by our display.

QSL Info – we have uploaded most of our logs to QRZ already and will work on LoTW shortly.  We highly recommend checking out the logs before submitting a QSL card just to make sure we have you in the log.  If there is a question you can  and we will work to get it rectified.  An awesome special event QSL card is now ready to be sent to the printers.  The front side sample is shown here.  Once you have confirmed your contact please send your QSL along with $5usd (if you live outside Canada) or $5cdn if you live in Canada.  No need for a SASE as the $5 will cover the cost of mailing our QSL to you.  Any additional funds left over will be donated to the Ontario Regiment Museum.  QSL via contact info for VE3NSR (see above).

POTA Info – before this special event we were able to get Airmen’s Park assigned as park VE-5535.  However, POTA is not putting any new parks on their site until the first quarter of 2022 so we cannot upload our logs until then.  That will not stop you from QSLing us but just be aware that your POTA contact with us will not show up on POTA until that time.  Airmen’s Park is a historical site as during WWII this was one of the sites used to train pilots for combat in Europe.

Since you are here, why not meander over to the Ontario Regiment Museum site as well by clicking here.

Click here for pics of our prep and the actual Aquino Tank Weekend.

Below are some videos from the weekend.  This first one is an overview of our setup and operations.

Fun Facts!

  • the Ontario Regiment Museum has the largest collection of operational military vehicles in North America
  • they have over 100 vehicles in their collection
  • the museum has two full-time staff and over 140 volunteers
  • these volunteers act as guides, drivers, maintainers and restorers of the vehicle collection
  • the airport, where the museum is located, opened in June 1941 under the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan as No. 20 Elementary Flying Training School RCAF Station Oshawa
  • potential military pilots from Commonwealth and Occupied countries were trained on this field
  • a portion of the museum land has been designated as a Heritage Conservation District encompassing the former Canteen and Stores Buildings, the No. 10 Building, and Airmen’s Park
  • Aquino Weekend is a three-day world-class event highlighting the military vehicles in themed  battle demonstrations
  • common themes are “WW2 – Western Front”, “WW2 – Eastern Front”, “Gulf War”, and “Vietnam”
  • each simulated battle has vehicles, re-enactors, firepower and pyrotechnics
  • this event draws visitors and participants from around the globe
  • World of Tanks, a popular software game, sponsor this event and are often present

For more information please visit the links above or email Laird VE3LKS.

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