Greetings for the last time from Boa Vista
Many thanks to all who hung in there and kept calling us on Topband over the
weekend.
We managed to pull many of you out of the noise - with over 150 of them being
from Europe no less - despite tough Rx conditions down here.
Our line score in the contest was 340/19/66.
In order to hear ***ANYTHING*** at all, Wayne Mills and I set up a new 1000
foot beverage on Europe, plus two separate 1000 footers to the USA. These were
as far as we could go with our feedlines and about 1000 feet away from anything
else down here - xmit antennas and the local power lines.
These plus TWO MORE existing beverages on Europe plus ONE EXISTING beverage on
the states allowed us to copy a couple of layers at least into the atmospheric
QRNNNNN and power line noise down here.
I think I just about WORE OUT the beverage switch trying to find a quiet
antenna during the contest - at one moment one antenna would appear quiet and
then 3 minutes later, it presented noise well above the signal level of
incoming callers.
Our BEST hearability (despite some EU comments I have read) was into Europe and
the Middle East where we worked two OH's, three SM's, ES, YO, LZ, 4X3A, P3A,
5B4AGC and A92ZE. Italian signals coming out of Europe were several S units
above anything else from that region of the world - an observation which
occurred repeatedly.
Stateside signals were really hard to copy at **any** time. Curiously enough,
Midwestern signals were MUCH louder than the USA eastern seaboard down here.
The expected signal levels of the really BIG W1, W2, W3 multi's were well down
- but workable nonetheless.
I would have to say that three stations had truly outstanding signals down here
in this order:
W8LRL - 10 DB louder than anything else (Must be doing something right Wal!)
W8JI - consistently loud
K9NS - almost "beacon-like" all night long
Before the contest, John Batten at K9DX was booming also - every time I heard
him. That new 11 element vertical array is really playing John.....
We had one really funny occurrence down here.
Just prior to the end of the contest - about 2230z, both N7NG and I noticed our
ONLY good beverage started going PUNK.
At first it sounded intermittent, then kinda squirrely, then DEAD.
We both took off our headphones at almost the same time and said "Did the NE
Beverage just go dead?"
Sure enough that is exactly what happened.
After about 5 minutes, a couple of our local PY guys - Nicolau and Wilmar came
in holding a 6 foot piece of our FEEDLINE.
They had wrenched it from the mouth of a COW who was "eating our signals" they
said.
Thus the name "VACA CACA"!
I think this is a FIRST for me - and I have a short piece of this feedline
which I plan on taking back home to my shack. It is going to be framed as
follows:
VACA CACA
PT5A
November 2002
Thanks again to all of those who called us this weekend.
It was much appreciated.
Qsl's to PP5VB.
73 JEFF
K1ZM@aol.com
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