WestCumb ARC - Comms Trailer

The WestCumb ARC completed its new communications trailer project on May 30th, 2026. It took 6 months and 320 man hours to complete.

The trailer will run entirely on Solar Power ☀️ but has provisions for electrical mains and generator if needed.

Special Council Meeting March 5th, 2025

At the September 2024 meeting of the WestCumb ARC a new project was brought up to purchase an enclosed trailer and installed all aspects of amateur radio that the club would use to promote the hobby, train operators, attend community events and be available if needed in a real emergency.
At a special council meeting for the Municipality of Cumberland on March 5th, 2025 (see below) members of the WestCumb Amateur Radio Club gave a presentation looking for funding towards the new project.
Steve Orr VE1OR and Mike Johnson VE1MWJ presented the proposal.

June 11th, 2025

There was a special club meeting tonight June11th, 2025 to go over funding for the proposed communications trailer.

After much discussion a vote was taken to ask members YES or NO on the purchase of the trailer.

After 15 votes online and 13 proxy votes it was unanimous that the project would go ahead.

Steve VE1OR & Jim VE1JBL will be heading to Moncton in the morning to talk to Work & Play about ordering an IDEAL trailer (Made in Canada) for our club. It could take up to two months before we see the trailer but saying that we will have the trailer we want with the right options.

A reminder if you pledged funding for the project please honor those pledges as it will help with the build.

I mentioned at the first club meeting last September 2024 this will probably be a two year project. It has been 10 months since the seed was planted for this project and to get the funding. Now in June 2025 that gives up 15 months to get the project to the finish line and saying that I mentioned tonight that I would like to see the trailer finished and have its debut at SMART26. That would be 11 months. Time will tell.. No pressure at all. LOL.

Thanks to everyone for the support of this project and again this will be a club project and will be looking for help with the build out of the trailer.

Will keep everyone up-to-date on happenings.

Funding from The Town of Amherst and the Muncipility of Cumberland

On June 16th, 2025 Jim Langille VE1JBL & Kevin Burke VE1KEV receive a grant from Mayor Rob Small of the Town of Amherst towards purchasing a Amateur Radio Communications Trailer
Also in the photo are Left to Right; councilors Charlie Chambers,
Hal Davidson, Terry McManaman, Jim, Kevin, Robert, Nic Furlong and Dwayne Ripley.

On June 27th, 2025 Jim Langille VE1JBL received a grant from Mayor Rod Gilroy of the Municipality of Cumberland towards the purchase of a new Amateur Radio Communications Trailer.

The club also received funding from The Christie-Smith Community Fund.

Built by Ideal Cargo and sold by Work & Play Moncton NB

On September 9th, 2025 members of the WestCumb ARC travelled to Moncton to pick up their new enclosed trailer.
This trailer was built in Quebec and is made of bio composite panels of 6500 recycled plastic bottles.
It is high impact resistance, thermal resistance, R5 insulation, sound proofing, has a smaller carbon footprint and again "Made in Canada"🇨🇦

1st day of build. Installing plywood to the walls / Mounting the WARC founders members plaque

Brian VE1BSD and Steve VE1OR applying the 3/4" birch plywood.

Plaque recognizing club members who donating funding towards the trailer.

Installing solar panel racks to the trailer ladder racks

Frank VE1FSM installing the solar panel racks to the ladder racks.
Thanks to Go Glass for letting us use their bay for work on the trailer.

Installing solar panels.

Steve VE1OR and Chad VA1CS installing the solar panels on the roof of the trailer.

Installing wind deflector.

Frank VE1FSM and Steve VE1OR installing the wind deflector Frank made and donated by Go Glass in Amherst.

Installing cables from solar panels to Solar Charger/ Inverter

Installing Batteries, Electrical Panels and table top.

Batteries installed and wired thanks to Chad VA1CS, Steve VE1OR and Garrett VA1OR

Front table made and installed by Brian VE1BSD

Installing work tables and radio rack

Work Tables assembled, modified and secured by Borden VA1CBC and Jim VE1JBL.
The radio and battery racks were cleaned and painted by Colleen VE1CEO and Garrett VA1OR.

Installing entrance box for mains/generator and electrical to work tables

Outside entrance, complete wiring and plugs thanks to Steve VE1OR

Installing DC to the radio rack

DC Busbars, shunt, breakers and switch.

DC Busbars at radio rack and entrance feed for antennas.

Mount water proof box on roof to feed antenna cables and Starlink inside trailer.

Waterproof box mounted on roof to carry antenna cables inside of trailer.

Three dual-band antennas and the Yaesu ATAS antenna. When completed there will be eight antennas on the roof.

Starlink Mini mounted on back of trailer.

Set up computers & monitors to work stations "A" & "B"

Monitors and mini computers installed at both stations

The callsign for the trailer will be VE1WRC and for Winlink the address is ve1wrc@winlink.org

Wire and installed Fridge, Microwave to shelving unit

Shelving unit built and installed by Brian VE1BSD

Installing radio racks and radios

Six radios installed on the radio rack. All have Anderson power poles connected to a power pole distribution bar.

Left to right top down:

Yaesu FT-891 HF / ICOM 7100 HF

ICOM 5100 D-Star / Alinco MR-500 DMR

Yaesu FTM-300 C4FM / Yaesu FTM-300 C4FM

Installing the last antennas on roof, connectors on all antenna ends and connecting all to the radios.

December 19th, 2025

It was another productive day working on the WARC Trailer.
Jim VE1JBL, Steve VE1OR, Chad VA1CS and Mike VE1MWJ spent the day installing two more antennas on the roof and connectors to the coax. All radios now have power. We had our first contact via VHF with Jim VE1JBL making a contact with Frank VE1FSM.

December 21st, 2025

Finished the connectors to all the antennas and wired the 120 volt DC charger to the 12 volt batteries. Picked up the vertical antenna from the county office but found it in disarray. Will look more closely at it another time.
I did bring in my 20 and 80 meter Ham Sticks and we can use them as an alterative for HF if needed.
Hard to see inside the barn but if you can zoom in and look closely and you can see three antennas on each side of the trailer along with the three solar panels and the Starlink mini.. First time outside will get a better picture.
We are planning a POTA expedition early in the new year to test out the trailer and see what we have and what we still need. Will let everyone know the date for our first activation of the trailer. Possible location Fort Beausejour.

January 1st, 2026

As of January 2026 we are 90% completed and the last two large projects is to have storage units installed inside and have logos placed on the sides and the back of the trailer.
We hope to hear from Carter's Cresting soon to have this completed. Once done we will post pictures here.

January 9th, 2026

Jim (VE1JBL) and Steve (VE1OR) took advantage of some milder - 0C - weather today and took the Auxiliary Communication Service (ACS) Trailer out for an impromptu "shake-down" run and possible POTA activation at Fort Beausejour.

Set up proved to be quick and easy and had the generator power and heat on in a matter of minutes. It was a good test of the propane powered generator that together with the 1500 W heater kept the trailer interior at comfortable temperature despite a stiff breeze coming in off the Bay of Fundy.

Tested the installed dual band VHF / UHF radios as well as the primary HF and ATAS auto tune antenna. VHF and UHF proved to work well from that location and the local repeaters easily accessed. We did experience some issues with the HF ATAS antenna and found that it struggled to properly tune for best SWR. This despite some successful earlier test. It is suspected that the ground system - which is incomplete - needs to be finalized. Some design work on this was discussed when we returned.

One visitor to the Fort - from PEI - did stop in to the trailer before leaving and asked about what we were up to and why all the antennas - our first opportunity to tell someone new about HAM radio.

Some additional radio mounting was finalized when we returned to the barn (DMR & D-Star) and a telescoping mast that was ordered was set-up and install options were reviewed.

January 15th, 2026

Jim VE1JBL & Steve VE1OR went to Carter's today to talk to the staff about placing decals on the trailer. It is estimated this will be done early February.
One item that was brought up at the last meeting was to have the solid lines on the trailer being reflective. This will be done to both the yellow and blue lines.

After this was completed, we returned to Steve's and brought out the trailer to check the ATAS antenna we had a problem with the other day. We checked it while connected to power mains and also only batteries and both times the antenna worked with no problem.
We had contacts with stations in Canada and USA and reports were 59 +++ and the SWR was 1-1 on all bands 40-10 meters..

After that we tested out two ham sticks 20 & 80 meter and both worked flawlessly so these will be a great backup if necessary. We have received our telescoping tower and once we have a base made we will try this out with the end fed antenna which was donated from club member Hal Rodd VE1LV (SK). Hal also donated two FTM-300D radios.
We are going to experiment making a homemade coax entrance from a water proof box donated by Frank VE1FSM which will include two SO239 connectors which we will be able to screw on coax from two outside antennas and on the inside the connectors will be connected to the HF rigs. This box will also have a ground strap so we can ground the trailer once at a location. The final project will be the storage units and we are still looking at different options.

The project is now up to 246 man-hours over 4 months

February 6th, 2026

With the weather being so cold lately we have not had much time to work on the trailer so Jim VE1JBL & Steve VE1OR decided to take my new Chevy out for its first road trip and spend the day travelling around to local schools (Amherst, Oxford & Springhill) to introduce ourselves and let them know we would like to bring the trailer around and let the students tour the trailer as an outside learning class.
The students would be introduced to the hobby and also as a science lab, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) principles that are taught in school, with emphasise on electronics and also geography.
If we do get the interest, we plan to expand this to other schools in Cumberland County.

FYI, we are still waiting on Carter's Sports Cresting to place logos on the trailer. Probably once the weather warms up.

March 16th, 2026

Finally after a couple of months of an old fashion winter (cold & lots of snow) spring is finally arriving and we got a chance to start work again on the trailer.
Steve VE1OR and Jim VE1JBL starting grounding everything inside the trailer. We are also looking into adding additional lighting inside the trailer.
Brian VE1BSD arrived during the afternoon to take measurements for the storage units and drop down table we will install inside.

We purchased a telescopic flag pole which will be used to raise the end fed antenna for HF operations. Mike VE1MWJ is making a metal sleeve that we will use to hold the pole while extended.

Talked to Carter's today. They are waiting till the temperatures rise before installing logos . Do not want to install on a cold trailer. We are hoping for the first week of April.

March 25th, 2026

Thanks to club member Brian MacDonald VE1BSD he has cut all the pieces needed to build our storage units for the trailer. Once finished the unit will be installed at the site.

April 7th,2026

Here are a couple of pictures taken today after the storage unit was installed. There is a 24" drop down table that will be installed soon in the open section.

UPDATE:
April 10th, 2026 The finished product below. Thanks to Brian MacDonald VE1BSD for his commitment to the project and all the hard work.

April 9th, 2026

A very nice sunny afternoon was what we needed to install a waterproof box on the outside of the trailer. After a trip to town to pick up a couple of items, Steve VE1OR drill two holes in the box to install two double Female UHF Straight Adapters which will be used to allow coax from outside antennas inside the trailer and connected to the HF radios. He also drilled a third hole to allow passage of an adapter for ground. Once the box was finished holes were drilled through the wall of the trailer and then the box was screwed into place and sealed to keep the water out.
Thanks to Frank VE1FSM for the donation of the box.

April 14th, 2026

Thanks to Carter's Sports Cresting in Amherst NS the new WestCumb ARC Comms Trailer is now complete. Thanks to Steve VE1OR for transporting the trailer to have it completed. The official unveil will be May 2nd at SMART26 in Springhill Nova Scotia.
It took 6 months and 320 man hours to complete the project.