CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW
Call: V47KP
Operator(s): W2OX, W2GD
Station: V47KP
Class: M/2 HP
QTH: St. Kitts
Operating Time (hrs): 44
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
------------------------------
160: 141 14 42
80: 565 21 86
40: 1112 28 105
20: 1429 33 118
15: 1975 34 117
10: 2139 30 107
------------------------------
Total: 7361 160 575 Total Score = 13,469,610
Club: Frankford Radio Club
Comments:
CQWW CW is THE CONTEST.....and the adventure continues.......
Station:
TH7 @ 10M
TA33 @ 7M
160M and 80M Inverted Vs at about 20M
2 ele 40M wire yagi, 10M long boom, at 15 meters.
150M long beverages NE and NW
IC756ProII and Alpha 91B
TS950 and LK550 1KW
The Story:
Late last summer K4UEE and I decided it was Bob's year to operate CW at P40R and
I'd do the SSB weekend as P40W from our shared station on Aruba. This left me
free to search for an off-shore seat in November.
At Dayton last spring, Alex, W2OX, had mentioned to me in passing he'd like to
try M/2 during WW CW from his hilltop V4 QTH. I'd always noted from Aruba how
loud V47KP has been over the years, so a short email later the deal was done,
I'd be spending the Thanksgiving Holiday weekend in the Eastern Carribean.
Arrived on St. Kitts Tuesday afternoon, and we immediately headed north out of
town. We kept climbing and climbing, the road quickly narrowed and became a
rutted mess heading straight up. Alex told me it was a great location, but I
had to see for myself. Then the hilltop finally came into view, his 70 foot
tower with TH7 and 402BA and two commerical towers on the site poking up over
the trees. Later, climbing one of the towers, provided panoramic views of the
coastline from SE to NW, the Atlantic Ocean 400 meters below washing up on black
sand beaches. I now understood why V47KP is sooooo loud!
The shack and living quarters are a 4 by 4 meter concrete block 'hut' that Alex
had built a few years ago. Its 16 inch thick concrete roof makes it virtually
hurricane proof...a major issue here. It was cramped, but liveable, and the A/C
unit made it comfortable most of the time.
I arrived figuring the only heavy work to be done would be building two beverage
antenna systems, finish putting up the 160 and 80 wires, help get a new 2M
packet system working, and maybe build an 80M gain antenna if time allowed.
Well....things didn't quite turn out as planned.
Alex had informed me he'd never had much success with receiving antennas, having
tried short beverages, pennents, EWEs, etc. I quickly understood the problem,
the easily accessible area for erecting these antenas ran north and south along
the ridge line near the transmit antennas, while the antennas had to run NE and
NW and needed to be further away. The only way to do this was to run the wires
down the hill on the west side through very thick forest vegetation, cross the
access road, and then down a 45 degree steep grade full of thick 1.5 meter high
grasses. The feed point for the NE beverage would need to be at least 300+ feet
away. No problem, I'd carried down 1000 feet of new RG8X in my 138 lbs. of
checked luggage.
Wednesday morning we spent a few hours hanging the 160 and 80M inverted V
antennas. W2SC/8P5A had supplied me with dimensions for a 2 element 80M array,
but as events unfolded on Thursday, there would be no time to give it a try.
First priority was putting up the beverages.....an effective NE beverage antenna
seemed essential having witnessed the extensive T-storm activity off to the SW
at dinner the prior evening. Fortunately a work crew engaged to clean up the
site in preparation for the erection of a second tower, were quickly diverted to
use their machettes to cut a path through the thick woods for the NE beverage.
The real fun was extending the wire over the road and down the hill to the SW
through the blanket of thick/tall grasses. It seemed every time I'd set out to
do any wire work that day, it would begin to rain - HARD. I was resigned to
being soaked to the bone....and just kept moving. At one point while running
the NE beverage, the hilltop became totally engulfed in the clouds....the fog so
thick we couldn't see the reference point just 500 feet way...such fun. In the
end the EU beverage was finished, and the NW beverage run through 150 feet of
thick woods to the edge of the access road. It would wait for another day.
Tuesday and Wednesday evenings we had dinner with Karl, V44NK, who had
volunteered to host the first 2M packet system on St Kitts/Nevis. Did I mention
the hilltop has no phone service? The only cost effective way to receive DX
spots was to create our own packet network. Fortunately Karl also works for the
local cable company, and his backyard faced our hilltop. Alex and I had carried
down all the need elements for the node, a PC, 2M transceiver, TNC, router, even
a 2M mobile whip antenna. The plan was to have the V44NK-1 node access the K2UT
telenet site via a high speed cable modem connection. Special thanks go to N3RD
for loading, configuring and testing the PC installation of Spider software
before departure. It would turn out to be plug and play.....almost.
We installed the node equipment Tuesday night at Karl's but the cable modem
didn't want to hold a connection. It would need to be replaced....we had the
same problem again Wednesday night....and we began to worry that we might not
get the node working properly by Friday. More on this later.
Thanksgiving (Thurs) was scheduled to be the day we finished off 160/80 meter
wire tuning, finish stringing the NW beverage, and set up the shack computer
network. We get the wires tuned and by chance noted the rotor on the 70 foot
tower wasn't workng...we couldn't hear the distinctive tailtwister break
release. A climb up the tower didn't reveal any particular wiring problem,
everything was still intact. We needed to get the rotor down for replacement.
The 70' tower holding up the TH7 and 40M beam is designed with a 50 foot gin
pole arrangement so it can be lowered with the antennas attached using a winch.
This installation had been in place for about 4 years. What we didn't know, the
salt laden environment had taken its toll on the pivot point steel work. About
two thirds of the way down we saw the tower was starting to lean abnormally to
the left, and then we suddenly heard a loud "SNAP" as one of the pivot bolts
lifted loose from its proper position. The tower didn't fall, we weren't in any
danger whatsoever, but it became abundantly clear the only option was to finish
lowering the tower safely to the ground.....where it would remain for the
remainder of the weekend. We'd have to formulate and implement PLAN B to
replace these key antennas and the support for our low band antennas. The
second TH7 on a 10M tall pole next to the hut would become our main high band
antenna this weekend.
When Murphy of this magnitude strikes just 33 hours before the scheduled start
of the contest, it becomes a race against the clock to recover. A quick
assessment of the the situation suggested we would needed to reconfigure the 160
and 80 meter antennas into inverted Vs hung from one of the 25M high
communications towers on site. We'd also need to build a wire 40M wire gain
array, 2 or 3 elements, to be competitive on 40M. Finally a 2nd Tribander or
wires would be essential to keep both transmitters of our M/2 station on the air
during daylight hours. We'd also have to efficiently apply our nearly 90 years
of combined Field Day experience to pull this off in time.
The remainder of Thanksgiving Day we worked on wire antennas. The 160 and 80M
dipoles were put up on the closest comm tower at about 60 feet. We had to bend
one end of the 160 antenna around to keep in on the hillside. A catenary rope
was then strung between the two comm towers at about 50 feet, and previously
constructed 4OM DE and REF elements were pulled out of the station stockpile.
The hard part would be putting up the ends of the 40M elements, since the ridge
drops off so quickly on each side. A few well placed casts with a fishing pole
into the available trees sped up the process...we finished our days work in very
heavy rain. Assembling and raising the spare TA-33 tribander on the available
7M mast would have to wait until the next morning.
To make matters worse, we discovered one of our PC monitors was now refusing to
remain powered on when the PC was turned on. When it rains.....well you know.
The next item on the list was to get the packet node running in town and
connecting up on the hill...there was now no tomorrow. We headed down to
V44NK's place armed with our 2M xcvr, TNC and laptop to prove out connectivity.
Karl had acquired a working cable modem during the day and he now had Internet
connectivity on the node PC but for some reason we couldn't get our 2M station
to connect. After numerous attempts it was time to consult with a packet
expert. Unfortuately we couldn't reach Dave, N3RD....he was already up at
KC1XX's mega station for the weekend and wasn't answering his mobile phone.
Several internationl calls and help from K3NM, NO2R, N3RS, N2MG, and K1DG we
eventually got a message through to Dave to call us. He ran us through a list
of tests and eventually determined the node TNC wasn't handshaking properly with
the node PC and also the TXdelay setting on our 2M station TNC was set too low.
Once we resolved both of these problems we were finally able to establish a
successful connection. Mission accomplished, the only question left was
weather there would be any problem with the path from V44NK's place to our
location. This worry later proved to be unfounded....signals in both directions
were full scale.
After a very late dinner in town we went back up the mountain, got the packet
working, and started installing the computer network, having to overcome the
monitor problem (it had to be tricked out of sleep mode), and then configuring a
new 4 serial port board to use the needed IRQs. At about 1:30 a.m. we set the
alarm for daybreak (6:30), we still had to assemble the TA33 and put it up.
Rotation would be the armstrong method as required. V44NK arrived at about 7
a.m. to deliver a ladder we needed, and as it turned out, to get us up and
moving. Thanks Karl!
We got the TA33 together and up on the roof of a 3M high concrete shelter used
to house the resident commerical communications systems. A broken light fixture
on the front of the building provided an adequate attachment point. Once the
TA33 was up, it was on to putting up a 40M sloping dipole pulled off toward the
USA, pruning all the wire antennas to reasonable SWR readings, and finally,
completing installation of the NW beverage. Its now late afternoon and the
computers still aren't talking to each other in both directions. A little more
tweaking by Alex solved the problem, we finally had full connectivity and packet
working. Alex then set about building some .bat files to simplify bootup when
things failed (this turned out to be a huge time saver). Its now 22:30 UTC,
we've exhausted from all the physical work and little sleep. I laid down for a
30 minute power nap, Alex kept programming.
When the contest started it seemed no one could copy V47KP.....every other QSO
seemed to require a call repeat. Everything seemed out of sync....I began to
worry our low tribanders weren't up to the task. But after another 30 minutes
things started to click and we had the rate up in the 325+ range.
Conditions were very quiet both nights on the low bands. It as apparent the
untested beverages were working great, making operation on 80 and 160 much more
productive. Alex finally had to drop off for a few hours of sleep about 0600,
my 2 hour nap started at 0830 so I could be up about sunrise and start running
10 meters. Conditions seemed very good, maybe too good, but the steady stream
of EU qsos pushed the rate meter frequently over 400 for the last 10 and around
300 for the last 100. Not bad!
Then Murphy came to visit again....our packet node stopped deliverying spots.
We contacted NK via 2M FM and found out the Internet connection on the cable
network had failed. It would be off for the next 8+ hours, and the pattern
would repeat itself again on Sunday too. There was nothing we could do, it was
the weekend, so the engineers wouldn't be going into the office to resolve it.
Karl kept vigilence and rebooted the node PC several times to get things going
when needed. But I wonder what our final score might have been if we had that
18 to 20 hours of additonal spots.
At the end of the first day we had about 4,600 qsos, and our mulitipier total
was in line with the WP2Z two man M/2 in 2003. I had visions of making 8500 by
the end, but fatigue took its toll, we were both dead tired, and needed sleep.
Alex took a few short naps, while I stuck it out again to 0800 for my scheduled
2 hour repose. With the packet working overnight, every opportunity was used to
change bands to catch mults. This strategy seemed to work.
The QRN level was expectionally low on 160 and 80, and we managed to work almost
every EU station that would show up on TopBand. Working many UA9s, A4, and
A61AJ on 80 on the first call gave us a good indication the low band antenns
were working fine - as did our mounting country totals.
Sunday we plugged along on the high bands with some very good EU and USA runs.
At the time, without packet, and lacking the fortitude to do serious mulitiplier
hunting on our own, we went for rate. Ten was still in good shape to EU and the
USA. We were overjoyed when the packet came alive again about 2200 Sunday, and
the last two hours were spent chasing mults like crazy. 40M was unbelievably
open, heard but missed JT1CO but worked several doubles, the most notable being
YB0ECT. Wow! With 30 minutes to go, V44NK came up to observe us in action. We
pressed to the very end. It was then Carib beer time!
It appears we may have posted the worldwide high score for a 2 operator M/2
effort, and with a little luck we'll end in the top 4 or 5 overall in our class.
Not bad for a FD style weekend. The adventure was finally over.
We especially thank V44NK and V44KAI for their on-island assistance, without
which our final score would have suffered terribly. Thanks also go to K3NM,
NO2R, N3RS, N2MG, K1DG, KC1XX and especially N3RD for their support at very
critical times.
Alex and I will be QRV for ARRL CW from V47KP and P40W respectively in
February.
73, John W2GD/P40W
w2gd@hotmail.com
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