CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW - 2020
Call: 8Q7ZO
Operator(s): N5ZO W6NV
Station: 8Q7ZO
Class: M/M HP
QTH: Maldives
Operating Time (hrs): 48
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
------------------------------
160: 125 13 35
80: 352 26 64
40: 1403 32 98
20: 1224 31 97
15: 1896 30 101
10: 1015 24 84
------------------------------
Total: 6015 156 479 Total Score = 10,049,510
Club: Southern California Contest Club
Comments:
I had some plans to travel to zone 20 for this year’s WW CW contest, but due
to pandemic those plans started to fall apart around SSB contest time. The only
country in a new zone, I had not operated from in a CQ WW contest and where
travel would be possible without the complications of a 14-day quarantine was
the Maldives in zone 22.
The Maldives required a Covid-19 test before travelling and tourists were only
confined to their destination resort island. The Maldives is quite thorough in
their COVID protection procedures and remains quite free of COVID infections.
A quick skype call to Igor UA9CDC, who I knew from Zone 17 operations, set plans
into motion to operate from Sun Island Resort, the home of many operations of
8Q7DV by the Russian teams. Although they had not been there for 4 years Igor
had good information for operations on short notice.
I quickly scrapped single op plans as setting everything a multi-band station up
myself, without help, would require two guys to establish a competitive station
on an unfamiliar island. I contacted trusted old warhorse Oliver W6NV who was
immediately committed after his wife Ann said something like “have fun” and
so from then on we planned to be multi-op to simplify the station design and
provide unlimited flexibility and fun. A two-man MM was envisaged from the
beginning and seemed limited only by antenna and station building activities.
Licensing to Maldives was very easy and licensing authority answered overnight
to my inquiry.
After travelling about 30 hours constrained with COVID trimmings, we arrived by
speedboat on Sun Island Resort, Sunday before the contest. Big surprise, we
expected the water to be about 10 meters from our bungalow door, however, the
shore was now something like 100 meters away. Apparently sometime during last 4
years there had been major land reclamation project. A wide beach in front of
the best bungalow for ham radio in NW corner of the island. There were tourists
walking and wading the shoreline and many reclining chairs on the beach. We
quickly decided that due to shortage of coax and abundance of sunbathers, we
would set our antennas close to the rooms, not the ideal ocean front situation
enjoyed by the 8Q7DV Team.
It took us about 3 days to set up our antenna farm which was mix of some gear
stored by the 8Q7DV Team and VDAs and 5/8 wave 10 meter vertical carried in
Oliver’s ski bag. The antennas consisted of a 160/80 meter combination
inverted L, 40 meter center fed half wave, 20 and 15 meter VDAs and the 10 meter
5/8 wave. The coax feed to the 160/80 antenna with a common feed point was over
300 feet. The VDAs were pointed North and provided wide coverage primarily to EU
and the US. The systems worked out quite well, with only one mishap on Thursday
before the contest when the 20 meter VDA blew down in a rainstorm over night. A
Spiderbeam pole section was broken, but the problem was nothing two engineers
could not overcome with parts for a splint and good old duct tape.
We had 2 complete stations with 2x K3 radios and SPE 1.3k amplifier and Juma
PA1000 amplifier, low power band pass filters etc. We both had to pay for one
extra luggage each way to have everything we needed for this operation, and
Russian coax, wire, rope, 3 Spiderbeam poles and other miscellaneous stuff we
were able to use was essential for the operation. We had good internet
connection in the room, but had some problems with our computer-ran hotspot
networking crashing every now and then, probably because RF got into modem
cables in the room or something, it seemed to be worse during nighttime when we
were on low bands.
The highlight was achieving about 6000 contacts and 10-million points, we
forecasted. Of course, a 3rd or even 4th station with couple more operators
could have produced another 2000 contacts and made operation somewhat more
competitive in the MM category. There was always something going on at least on
3 bands. Openings to US and especially US West Coast were weak and short. QSB
and multipath echo was heavy in most bands. Despite making a special effort to
work 160 meters, conditions limited the total QSO count to approximately 300
before and during the contest.
The low light curse are today’s constant callers who listen little and are
often strong signals. These operators know well how to click spots and act like
they are using code readers. It is difficult to put anyone in the log when many
callers are on the spot frequency and just pushing the F4 key and being zero
beat with dozens or often hundreds of other callers does not work. Split
operation made things somewhat easier to handle. I personally definitely was in
zombieland on Sunday evening and at times had difficult time on radio to
understand what I was actually doing, it got better towards end of it again when
I got out of funk. Oliver took short nap on Sunday before high bands opened to
Europe, which was probably smarter than trying to operate whole thing. We both
drove bicycle for half mile to restaurant for dinner on each day, for other food
we stole crackers, eggs and cheese from breakfast buffet during the week to
stock up.
The contest ended 5 am local time on Monday. After a five hour rest we went to
lunch at the buffet and began to take the antennas down. By Tuesday noon the
antennas were disassembled and properly packed. We finally had the opportunity
to take a dip in pool and in Indian Ocean (only time during whole trip) by
sunset on Tuesday. We left Wednesday and now writing the 3830 post in the Dubai
airport.
Special thanks to Igor, UA9CDC, for the friendship, all advice and loan of
stored gear that made this operation possible.
This was my 31st CQ zone to operate CQ WW DX contest from. I’m happy that
despite pandemic I was able to put perhaps the hardest ones from my missing zone
list on air this year.
Tnx for Qs; it appears that Cycle-25 is off to a good start. We both expect to
see you next year from someplace interesting !
73 de Marko N5ZO
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