CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW
Call: HI/K8MR
Operator(s): HI/K8MR
Station: HI/K8MR
Class: SOAB Classic QRP
QTH: Punta Cana
Operating Time (hrs): 20
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
------------------------------
160: 0 0 0
80: 4 2 3
40: 29 5 17
20: 110 15 38
15: 286 16 34
10: 238 13 43
------------------------------
Total: 667 51 135 Total Score = 297,414
Club: North Coast Contesters
Comments:
I noted a comment from some zone 8/9 guy about how much work it was doing the
contest from a DX location. Quite the opposite for me.
With CQWW coming before Thanksgiving this year, I talked my wife into 10 days
of sun in Punta Cana, which just happened to include the contest. For the first
7 days we indeed had lots of fun and no work. I did get on for a couple of hours
in the LZ DX contest the weekend prior, just checking out the radio stuff from
the beach, and spent a few hours one day during the week making some WARC band
qsos. But otherwise no radio. Then Friday afternoon I put up a 43 foot wire
vertical outside the veranda of our room, and after yet another great dinner
started the contest.
The room location turned out to be quite noisy, and the KX3 wasn't exactly
crushing rocks. Mostly I worked other zone 8/9 guys. But the next morning at
sunrise I was up to take the radio and an MFJ telescoping vertical out to the
beach for the real operation.
Being 100 feet from the ocean made for much better signals and much lower
noise. Also a much better view! Once I got spotted I had a great 10 meter
pileup from EU, until I tried to engage the RIT and somehow moved off my
frequency. (The radio was in a ziplock bag to protect if from the elements, so
it was not easy to see what I was doing).
I kept at it during the day, minus breaks for breakfast and lunch (which also
served as battery recharge time). Unfortunately I was having a lot of problems
sending CW with the K9LU Bulldog paddle. I suspect that the time on the beach
earlier in the week had led to some corrosion, making the paddle contacts
unreliable, and making me sound like a severly drunken QLF lid. The problem
continued or got worse through the day. At sunset I packed up the antenna, left
the beach and headed back to the room, having made about 500 QSOs.
After dinner I tried some repair work on the paddle, but in the end finally
ended up putting the poor thing out of its misery. That evening I made a few
more contacts from the room with the laptop doing all the work, but had to face
the facts: I was up the creek without a paddle. So what to do the following day:
give up and return to normal resort life; operate from the room; or do pure
S&P from the beach, using only the WinKey with programmed messages. I ended
up doing the last.
So after breakfast Sunday I was back on the beach, with my sending limited to
"HI/K8MR" (in two versions, one with extra spacing) and "TU 5NN
8". Having no idea who I had worked before (I was recording the beach
operation for later transcription, which had been OK'd in advance)I had some
dupes with those I guessed wrong about, and passed up a lot of folks who I had
not worked. Not great, but the best I could do under the circumstances.
The paddle problems were certainly a downer, but the concept of QRP from the
beach was still great. I'm not sure if I'll do this again, as we're not likely
to travel outside the country over Thanksgiving, and simple antenna QRP is not
likely to be fun at a sunspot minimum. But still this all made for a memorable
way to operate CQWW!
73 - Jim K8MR
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