ARRL INTERNATIONAL DX CONTEST -- 1998
Call: P40W (W2GD opr.) Country: Aruba
Mode: SSB Category: SOAB HP
BAND QSO QSO PTS STATES/PROV ANTENNAS
160 165 495 36 Inverted V @ 65 ft.
80 449 1347 55 Inverted V @ 68 ft.
40 607 1821 55 2 ele Force 12 @ 72 ft.
20 1598 4794 59 4 ele Force 12 @ 72 ft.
15 2026 6078 59 5 ele Force 12 @ 86 ft.
10 2450 7350 59 5 ele Force 12 @ 79 ft.
-----------------------------------
Totals 7295 Q 21885 Pts. 323 Mult. = 7,068,855 Points
Operating Time: 40.7 hours per CT
Equipment Description: Antennas listed above plus the following:
TS930S, Alpha 87A, DVK, 486 Laptop with CT9,and two rx antennas:
300 foot beverage Northwest (300 degrees), and
300 foot beverage North (355 degrees)
Club Affiliation: FRANKFORD RADIO CLUB
QSL VIA N2MM
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* * *
GETTING READY - A SHORT STORY
TUESDAY: Got up at 4:30 a.m. to make the 7 o'clock flight from Newark
to San Juan (thanks go to Pat, N2ZVY for taking me to the airport at
such an early hour). Arrived on Aruba on schedule at 3:20 p.m. local
time. Went directly from the airport to town to get my license and to
pick up some food/drink. Got to the station location in Santa Cruz
about 4:30 p.m. and found the 160 and 40 meter antennas broken. Weather
conditions were extremely dry and windy. It hadn't rained on Aruba for
nearly 4 months and everything seemed to have a coating of salt brine
and dirt. The connector on the balun of the 160 inverted V had totally
disintegrated due to salt corrosion. One of the capacitive loading
wires on the 40M driven element was hanging lose, caused by a salt
induced flashover on the fiberglass support rod (a problem left over
from CQWW CW). In general it was very warm, dusty, windy and humid.
Yuck.
Did the easy stuff first. Fired up the old TS930. It worked fine.
Installed the power transformer in the Alpha 87A but let things dry out
a bit?.the temperature change from the plane ride always causes
everything to "sweat", especially the power transformer. I decided to
let it adjust to the local temperature conditions for a while and dry
out naturally. In the meantime ran through the bands checking SWR
curves. All the antennas except 160 and 40 looked normal. Before
sundown got the two beverage antenna feedlines deployed and one beverage
connected. Jacobo, P43P, stopped by and we went off to dinner. On the
way back I could see power lines arching everywhere due to the salt
buildup. About 10 p.m. fired up the Alpha 87A. After only 3 tries it
came up fault free and I kept it continuously powered up until Monday
morning (just in case). This particular amplifier is very sensitive to
humidity and its sensors have produced false readings in the past, I
surmise due to moisture. The Alpha really worked great the rest of the
week!
WEDNESDAY: Put up a second beverage, fixed the 160 meter inverted V, and
adjusted the 80M antenna for the phone band. It was hot and dusty work.
The wind was way too strong to even think about fixing the 40M beam.
Took a beach break late afternoon. Wednesday evening attended the Aruba
Amateur Radio Club meeting. Carl, AI6V/P40V and I discussed various
aspects of contesting and answered lots of questions. The club members
have become very interested in contesting and many local P43 callsigns
(like P43A, P43E, P43P, P43T, P43W, etc.) are appearing in contest logs
much more frequently. Look for a big effort from this bunch in the IARU
under the call P44HQ.
THURSDAY: This morning was the point of no return for fixing the 40M
driven element. With the grace of the man upstairs the day dawned
cloudy and the winds were down a bit. The 40 and 20 meter yagi share a
common 30 foot boom. The fix required removal of the first 20M
director, disconnecting the beam from the mast, lowering the antenna
about 5 feet using a hand winch, then pulling the beam into the tower to
reach the 40M element which is ten feet away. It all went pretty
smoothly but the antenna wanted to wonder quite a bit in the wind. I
replaced the fiberglass rod and then inserted small insulators between
the capacitive loading wires and the rod to prevent a future occurance.
I was also very pleased to see that the replacement wire Force 12
supplied has held up very well after over a year of exposure, with no
corrosion found.. This job took about 3.5 hours of tower time and I was
glad to get down and off to the beach for R & R.
FRIDAY: I did some human engineering in the shack, worked a few
hundred stations on cw, then took a trip to the beach. On the return
stopped by to see the QTH of Jacobo, P43P (formerly P43HOT). He has a
great location on the north side of the island on a hill overlooking the
water from NE to NW. His outstanding single band low power score on 15M
with a relatively low and small antenna tells me this will be a super
station someday soon. Got home and managed to take a 2 hour nap before
making final preparations.
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* * * * *
THE CONTEST - Another SHORT STORY
The hour by hour breakdown sheet below really says it all:
HOUR 160 80 40 20 15 10 HR TOT CUM TOT
0 ..... ..... ..... 125/38 175/36 ..... 300/74 300/74
1 . . 1/1 181/11 . . 182/12 482/86
2 23/14 . 112/29 . . . 135/43 617/129
3 9/2 83/26 44/5 . . . 136/33 753/162
4 38/6 130/18 . . . . 168/24 921/186
5 12/1 116/4 17/3 . . . 145/8 1066/194
6 7/2 15/2 72/9 . . . 94/13 1160/207
7 16/3 56/1 57/1 . . . 129/5 1289/212
8 20/3 4/1 39/1 ..... ..... ..... 63/5 1352/217
9 1/0 3/1 17/1 1/0 . . 22/2 1374/219
10 . . SLEEP . . . . 1374/219
11 . . . 53/2 7/1 . 60/3 1434/222
12 . . . 120/3 23/3 . 143/6 1577/228
13 . . . 69/0 80/6 . 149/6 1726/234
14 . . . . 123/3 68/21 191/24 1917/258
15 . . . . . 352/18 352/18 2269/276
16 ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... 326/4 326/4 2595/280
17 . . . . 1/1 262/7 263/8 2858/288
18 . . . . . 271/1 271/1 3129/289
19 . . . . . 224/2 224/2 3353/291
20 . . . . 256/4 26/0 282/4 3635/295
21 . . . . 220/0 4/0 224/0 3859/295
22 . . . 27/0 172/1 . 199/1 4058/296
23 . . . 285/4 4/0 . 289/4 4347/300
0 ..... ..... ..... 304/1 ..... ..... 304/1 4651/301
1 . . . 192/0 . . 192/0 4843/301
2 18/3 . 28/0 17/0 . . 63/3 4906/304
3 8/1 10/0 47/0 . . . 65/1 4971/305
4 12/1 . 54/1 . . . 66/2 5037/307
5 . . SLEEP . . . . 5037/307
6 . . SLEEP . . . . 5037/307
7 . . SLEEP . . . . 5037/307
8 ..... ..... SLEEP ..... ..... ..... ..... 5037/307
9 1/0 17/1 3/0 . . . 21/1 5058/308
10 . 15/1 45/2 . . . 60/3 5118/311
11 . . 68/1 1/0 . . 69/1 5187/312
12 . . 3/1 93/0 3/0 . 99/1 5286/313
13 . . . 37/0 53/1 . 90/1 5376/314
14 . . . 13/0 91/1 1/0 105/1 5481/315
15 . . . . 69/0 72/2 141/2 5622/317
16 ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... 187/1 187/1 5809/318
17 . . . . 37/0 119/1 156/1 5965/319
18 . . . . 228/1 18/1 246/2 6211/321
19 . . . . 107/0 123/1 230/1 6441/322
20 . . . . 170/0 18/0 188/0 6629/322
21 . . . . 68/1 163/0 231/1 6860/323
22 . . . . 13/0 216/0 229/0 7089/323
23 . . . 80/0 126/0 . 206/0 7295/323
DAY1 126/31 407/53 359/50 861/58 1061/55 1533/53 ..... 4347/300
DAY2 39/5 42/2 248/5 737/1 965/4 917/6 . 2948/23
TOT 165/36 449/55 607/55 1598/59 2026/59 2450/59 . 7295/323
This was my first opportunity to operate the ARRL DX PHONE contest from
Aruba or from any other location outside the U.S. for that matter (my
preference has always been to operate the CW DX events but building a
new home required me to be in New Jersey during the ARRL DX code
weekend).
Started the contest on 15 instead of 20 for a change. The band was wide
open and the initial chaos produced a quick 175 q's in 34 minutes before
moving to 20. A first hour total of 300 contacts was my best start in
any contest in over 30 years. Stayed on 20 for another hour (182) then
began moving between 160/80/40 the remainder of the night. Never felt
comfortable anywhere and it was extremely difficult to find a clear
frequency. 160 and 80 were very very noisy, the static seemed to be a
near continuous roar and I'm sure the arcing power lines nearby didn't
help. The beverages made it marginally possible to hear stronger
signals. I apologize to those of you I just could not pull through,
especially on 160. As it turned out the noise would be even worse the
second night. About 5:15 a.m. local time broke for a 2 hour nap - I
needed relief from the noise.
Caught the tail end of the 40M opening upon awaking just after sunrise
Saturday morning. For the next several hours struggled to get runs
going on 20 and 15, since it seemed everyone was beaming Europe. Kept
checking 10 and finally went there at 1445 Z. The next two hours
produced the best hours of the contest with huge pileups and back to
back 351 and 327 hours. WOW, now that got my adrenaline pumping, and
represents my personal all time best hourly rates in any contest. The
5.4 hours on ten produced 1533 contests during day one, an average rate
of 282 contacts per hour.
Eventually transitioned to 15 for a few good 200 hours and then
surprising back to back 285/304/192 hours on 20 meters during the
23/00/01 period. It just doesn't get much better!
Then the bottom fell out again. Both 160 and 80 were impossibly noisy
and 40M a total zoo. After three 65 hours in a row decided to call it a
night around 1 a.m. local time and take a longer (4 or 5 hour) nap to be
refreshed for the final push on Sunday.
Awoke about 0940 (the alarm clock wasn't set - I got lucky) and
immediately hit the low bands until sunrise. Again rates were generally
lousy (if you consider around a 100/hour from the Carrib.lousy) until
about 1530 when 10 opened up again, this time to the west coast (I don't
believe the eastern Carrib. had this early opening at all). Then made
some trips back to 15 which yielded even better rates. My son's
godfather Ed, K2SQ called in on 15 and we QSYed to 10 about 2115Z. This
was a lucky move since the band had come alive with east coast stations
and the rate went back up around 230. Finished out the contest on 15/20
with a 200 hour.
Looking back now there were 15 hours over 200/hour of which 4 were
300+/hour. Ten meters turned out to be simply outstanding and 15/20
weren't far behind. The overall average rate for the event was 179
QSOs/hour in 40.7 hours of operating time (198/hour Day1 and 157/hour
Day2).
Was it just my perception or were there fewer stations on 75 afterward.
Exchanged scores with PJ9G, FS5PL, HU1X, and 6D2X. Everyone had had
problems with noise on the low bands but it became apparent that 10
meters had been a whole lot better from my part of the world.
I want to especially thank NO2R, N2ZVY, N2NT, K2TW, N2MM, K3WW, K4UEE,
P43P, P49V, K2KW, N6BT and my understanding YL Elaine, KB2ERI, for
helping in their own unique ways to make this trip a great success.
Looking forward to operating CQWW CW from P40W next fall.
73,
John Crovelli, W2GD/P40W
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