ARRL 160-Meter Contest
Call: PJ2T
Operator(s): K8ND
Station: PJ2T
Class: Single Op HP
QTH: Signal Point Curacao
Operating Time (hrs): 22.9
Summary:
Total: QSOs = 832 Sections = 76 Countries = 0 Total Score = 126,464
Club: Mad River Radio Club
Comments:
Radio: FT-1000MP
Amplifier: Alpha 78
Tx Antenna: Inv-L (~90-feet effective vertical section)
Rx Antennas: USA Beverage (650 feet, 330 deg)
EU Beverage (1000 feet, 40 deg)
Pennant (US East Coast)
Contest Software: Writelog
Sections missed: KL7, VE4, VE5, and NT
This has long been my favorite contest, going back to Field-Day-style operations
with W8LT in the 1970s. Given the option to stay an extra week on Curacao
following CQWW CW to operate the 160 Meter Contest or to return to snowy Ohio, I
opted to stay for an extra week!
Unfortunately, by the time I realized the juxtaposition of contest weekends, the
Signal Point house and stations had been rented for the week following CQWW to
W9AEB, KC9OS, WG9J, WW9WW, WF9V, and W7FLE, all from Chicago. These fine
gentlemen kindly agreed to let me use one of the four stations at Signal Point
for the contest during their stay! Thanks guys!
As others have noted, Tropical Storm Odette made operating from the Caribbean a
real challenge, especially from as far south as PJ2 (latitude 12.1 degrees
North). On Friday night, noise was 40 over on the transmit antenna, and +15 to
+20 on the Beverages. By backing off of the RF gain, minimizing the preamp,
cranking in 18 dB of attenuation, and using the filters, EDSP, and IF shift, I
was able to maintain some sense of sanity and still work 400 stations Friday
night, although it was two or three characters at a time. Not fun! Members of
the Caribbean Contesting Consortium operating from the USA reported that I was a
real alligator Friday night: no surprise to me!
A surprise was that the single pennant, although preamplified to make it's
signal output about the same as the Beverages, seemed to be far less responsive
to this storm noise than were the Beverages, while presenting signals! I don't
recall having seen a previous report of this, but it bears some investigation.
Without the pennant on Friday night, I might have thrown in the towel
altogether.
Saturday was much better, although the storm was still very nearby, albeit with
a bit less energy. I didn't use any attenuation on the receiving antennas, and
the US/JA Beverage was more useful (although I still found the Pennant less
noisy, and used it much of the time). I worked another 400+ QSOs the second
night, and likely disappointed fewer folks with my "alligator-ness". Several QRP
stations made it into the log.
QSB was bad both nights, very deep and fast. Medium-strong stations would
dip from comfortable copy to noise during their exchange. I made many, many
repeat requests both nights.
I broke P40TA's South America record (which was my primary goal) by
over 100 QSOs and 17,632 points. (ARRL does not document these records, but
K3BU has created a web page that does: see
http://members.aol.com/k3bu/ARRL160Records.htm).
If conditions had been less noisy, I'm confident that the Signal Point station
could have *easily* surpassed ZF2NT's current World Record (for non-USA
stations) of around 1000 QSOs, even from South America (although Bruce can up
that record significanly given the same less noisy conditions)!
For those I couldn't hear this time around: sorry!
The Signal Point house and station are not yet booked for the CQ 160 Meter
Contest in January (see www.pj2t.org)!
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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