ARRL DX Contest, SSB
Call: PJ2T
Operator(s): WB9Z, WE9V, W9JUV, NW0L, W0CG, KB0VVT, KG0US, KG0UT
Station: PJ2T
Class: M/2 HP
QTH: Netherlands Antilles
Operating Time (hrs): 48
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160: 409 52
80: 1020 59
40: 1979 59
20: 2503 60
15: 3047 59
10: 503 45
-------------------
Total: 9461 334 Total Score = 9,479,922
Club: Caribbean Contesting Consortium
Comments:
A first at PJ2T: At times during the contest both signals from our Multi/2 were
YL voices. It was a privilege to welcome 17 year old Rebecca Rich, KB0VVT and
her parents KG0US and KG0UT to PJ2T. Rebecca is the 2004 Hiram Percy Maxim Award
winner, was licensed in Extra Class at age 8, carries a 4.0 grade average, is
President of NHS, and will be off to college soon, planning to stay straight
through a Ph.D.
If you heard her on the air before or during the ARRL SSB contest, you know
she?s an incredibly accomplished operator in both modes. Prior to the contest
she ran over 1000 QSOs, picking callsigns out of huge pileups on 40 CW (and
elsewhere) at 35 WPM++ with speed and accuracy. And she?s as good a contest
operator as we?ve ever seen here, maintaining very high rates concurrent with
total situational awareness, passing mults and Qs and snagging ops for skeds on
the low bands. At times Rebecca was on one station and her mom (Barb) on the
other. Dad Dave, KB0US also put in many hours in the contest. We?re glad to have
been able to participate in Rebecca?s first operation from the DX side and hope
she will be able to return to Curacao.
We?re also happy to welcome Chad, WE9V to PJ2T. He needs no introduction to the
contest community, and in a wild coincidence we looked back through the old logs
and found that WE9V was the 7th QSO ever made with the PJ2T callsign in our
first operation in November of 2000. It was a pleasure to have him here. In
addition, Joe, W9JUV, a member of our CCC contest club, was here for his first
venture into industrial-strength contesting. Very high on the honor roll and
often the last guy standing in the countdown at the Dayton DX Dinner, Joe has 58
years on Rebecca. It?s a privilege to have had such a mix of ham resumes and a
wide range of experience on the team for this operation.
The first night was the usual disappointment, with only about 40 minutes of
productivity out of 20 meters. We parked on 40 for the night and jogged the
other station back and forth between 75 and 160. We thought 160 was bad the
first night, but it was cake compared to the second night, when we listened most
of the night to 20 dB over S9 noise on all the Beverages and one flag. Ugh.
Apologies to all of the guys who met our sked on Saturday night at 0300Z only to
find us deaf from the tropical QRN.
After surviving the agonies of the first night, the high bands paid us back for
the suffering. We started on 21.303 Saturday morning and owned that frequency
all day, making over 2000 QSOs. Lurking for the 10 meter opening paid off with a
short but rewarding burst of activity centered on the 2100Z hour. The second
night we went nuts looking for normally easy mults on 160 such as SC, CO, VE2
and others, never finding most. The 40 meter ops patiently pounded and pounded
both nights, never with good rates and always with the frustration of splits,
broadcasters, and dodging other callers on our listening frequency, but the
patience paid off with nearly 2000 QSOs. VE9 turned out to be the most elusive
of the realistically possible mults this weekend. Thanks to VY1MB who shocked us
by ringing in on 20 for an unexpected ?dream? multiplier.
Sunday afternoon 10 opened ever so slightly, with NW0L fortunate to be in the
chair at Station # 1 at the right time. Marty did a superb job of harvesting
points and mults at breakneck speeds, quickly adding about 20 mults to
Saturday?s total, and running the rate meter up over 400/hour at times. He?s as
good as anyone you?ve ever heard ? need for speed. 10 was entertaining in that
the opening came in bursts, with no particular geographical pattern. At one
point we even specifically asked for 1?s only because we were chronically short
of New England mults. The boxes turned purple very fast in the W1 call area and
we quickly moved on.
We had the usual burst of high rates in the final couple of hours with Europe
gone on the high bands and U.S. beams turned toward the Caribbean. WE9V closed
on 20 and KB0VVT on 15 with composite rates of about 360/hour the last two
hours.
No persistent hardware problems all weekend ? Writelog held up solidly and we
were practically in heaven having just gotten ADSL at PJ2T. The speed and
connectivity are excellent, and NW0L installed a router so that we could web
surf wirelessly outside, even providing wireless Internet access to our next
door neighbor. No more spastic dial-up and no more guilt over the old $3/hour
timed charges for Internet access via Curacao dialups. Telecommunication
competition and deregulation on Curacao have done great things in the last three
years. We even have digital U.S. TV programming now. All of the off-season
maintenance work we do here paid off. Big thanks to Station Manager Jeff, K8ND,
for all his time and efforts to make things work here. When we need 1.75 amp
slow blow fuses for the Alpha linear step-start circuit, they?re here on the
shelf, in quantity, thanks to Jeff.
Many thanks to NW0L for arranging and coordinating our crew, and to WB9Z, W9JUV,
WE9V, KB0VVT, KG0US, and KG0UT for making the trip. And as always special thanks
to Cindy, W0CG?s XYL, without whose blessing none of this would be happening.
Thanks to everyone for the PJ2T QSOs and the super friendships we?ve made
through contesting.
For the PJ2T Crew,
- Geoff, W0CG, PJ2DX
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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