Amateur Radio Station VE6DCM in Edmonton, Canada

My Station

I have been actively involved in amateur radio since October 2001 using the call signs VE6WK / VE6DCM and located at grid square DO33.  Originally principally on VHF / UHF using FM and SSB, and since July 2005 on HF.  My station equipment consists of a Yaesu FT-100D all band, all mode radio, Cushcraft AP8 vertical 80m to 10m, and Diamond X-50A vertical VHF / UHF.

For mobile operation I have being using a Icom IC-2200H mobile, Yaesu FT-150 HT, and Icom IC-91AD (D-Star) HT.


2010-04-19  Bill 16 - Traffic Safety ( Distracted Driver ) Amendment Act, 2010

In response to the initiative by Alberta Transportation to band all recreational use of 2-way radio I forwarded the following letter to the Minister of Transportation and subsequently e-mailed the same to all Alberta MLAs.

Bill 16 Traffic Safety Distracted Driver Comments

This bill has the effect of completely eliminating all recreational 2-way radio communication while operating a motor vehicle.  Aside from the fact that 90% of all cell phone traffic is essentially "recreational" communication, it is clearly unsupported by any evidence to indicate that the use of a hand held microphone was ever a safety problem.


2005-07-22  Decision by Industry Canada regarding Elimination of Morse Code

The final decision by Industry Canada can be found at:
Spectrum Management and Telecommunications - Gazette Notice DGRB-003-05


2004-08-28  Canada Gazette Notice DGRB-002-04  Elimination of Morse Code

Amateur radio is changing rapidly in every regulatory jurisdiction around the globe.  Here in Canada, the Department of Industry (Industry Canada) accepted an request from the Radio Amateurs of Canada (RAC) for regulatory change and elimination of Morse code.  Industry Canada released a call for comments in the Canada Gazette Notice DGRB-003-04.  I carefully considered the ramifications of the changed proposed by the RAC and decided that it was necessary to confront what I considered to be an abusive recommendation. You may obtain a pdf file version of my comments from this link:  ve6dcm-dgrb-003-04-comments.pdf.    size: 195 KB

These comments were prepared in part because of the perceived natural unfairness of the RAC Proposal to arbitrarily exclude 24,000 licensed radio operators from access to the HF bands, and to unreasonably increase the pass mark for future amateur radio operators from the current 60% to 80%.   It is perceived that the effect of the RAC Proposal would be to unreasonably limit access by Canadians to the amateur bands and the universal enjoyment of the hobby.



Should you wish to contact me you may send an e-mail to:  info.yyyy@thranite.com  
Replace yyyy with the current year.

Put RADIO in the subject line of your e-mail to get past the SPAM filters.  



Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied:
"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. 
You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. 
Do you understand this?
And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. 
The only difference is that there is no cat."      


Useful Links:

Radio Amateurs of Canada

NARC - Northern Alberta Radio Club  repeaters:  VE6HM  VE6UV

NARC - Northern Alberta Radio Club - Forum

QCARC - Quarter Century Amateur Radio Club  repeaters:  VE6QCR  VE6BOX  VE6PP  VE6SS

North Central Amateur Radio Club (St. Albert)

Industry Canada - Amateur Radio Service

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