Club History

The genesis of the Lanark North Leeds ARES group began in 1992 when Don MacKenzie VE3ULM, the owner of Highland Communication and his friend Wayne VE3ICF installed a repeater at the Christie Lake site. Don had recently built the tower site to provide commercial repeater services in the area. A smattering of area amateurs coalesced to this new 146.640 repeater being the only one in the area. There soon developed a community of hams with varying interests the hobby. As Don Mackenzie’s commercial business grew, he started to acquire more commercial tower sites with those of interest to the local hams being Lavant and Tweed. These were microwave relay sites and our occupancy was facilitated by Sandy VE3AAC, the local CTV chief engineer.

Don recommended that we relocate the Christie Lake repeater to Lavant where the existing tower and high elevation provided the excellent coverage that we enjoy to this day. Don suggested that we could extend the coverage to the west by installing a repeater in Tweed and linking it to Lavant. George VE3GWS and VE3BSB while at the Dayton Hamfest, acquired a set of GE mobile radios to be used at Lavant and Tweed. Art VE3CGD recommended the NHRC 4 controllers that he used to build the original two repeater linking system. Later on, we modified the linking so as to be able to link several repeaters into a network.

About this time, George VE3GWS who had been the editor of the TCA ARES column, recommended that we should form a local ARES Group, and this became the true Genesis of the LNL ARES Group and eventually the Lanark North Leeds Amateur Radio Emergency Services Inc.

In January 1998 the region was hit by a major damaging ice storm resulting in the loss of electricity due to damaged power lines. Hydro agencies outside the affected area sent crews and equipment to Perth. ARES was called out to solve the problem that the vehicles and crews, while they were equipped with mobile radio, they did not have common communication frequencies. So we mobilized our operators to take their personal ham mobile radios and ride in the out of town hydro trucks and a base station operating on the Lavant repeater was established at the Rural Fire Department in Perth to provide interoperability.

By this time the County activated their Emergency Plan and a command post was established at the County Administration building. With the realization of the extent of the damage, shelters were opened in each municipality’s community center, and schools and a supply distribution center was activated. In those days the community centers did not have telephones.

The call went out for the ham radio fraternity to man these facilities and provide communications back to the Command Post at County. In some areas the outages lasted for twenty days and the radio logs of the time indicated that a total of 91 local and neighbouring hams came to take their turn at supporting the network. Members of the Almonte Amateur Radio Club were included as one shelter was at the Clayton Community Centre.

ARES received recognition from the County as to the importance of having such a resource in the community, a memorandum of understanding was established to formalize the relationship.

Amateurs from the Westport area joined the Group and to provide better coverage the Christie Lake repeater site was reactivated with the call sign VA3TEL and as more equipment was sourced, a UHF repeater was activated at the Legion in Westport.

Similarly, a linked UHF repeater was installed by the Almonte Group and John VE3OAX encouraged us to also link in his Toledo repeater.

While this history of LNL ARES has focused on the coming together of the hams in the area it should be noted that a vibrant social life was enjoyed along with participation in Field Days, Contesting, launching and tracking of high altitude balloons, and assisting each other with antenna projects and all things Ham Radio.

The 2005 LNL ARES Operations Manual, authored by Art VE3CGD contains the membership list comprised of the names of 40 active amateurs.