CQWW WPX Contest, CW
Call: SV9/W1NN/P
Operator(s): W1NN
Station: SV9/W1NN/P
Class: SOAB LP
QTH: Crete
Operating Time (hrs): 36
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 1
80: 125
40: 332
20: 430
15: 653
10: 205
------------
Total: 1746 Prefixes = 694 Total Score = 2,132,664
Club: North Coast Contesters
Comments:
This was what might be called a “suitcase contest expedition,” meaning that
everything �" antennas, radio, power supply, etc. �" is transported
to the operating QTH �" a rental house, in this case - in suitcases, much
like a Field Day operation. I’ve done this twice before �" in the
Azores (CT8) in 2010 and in France last year. This time my house was on an
isolated oceanfront property on the north coast of Crete.
Why Crete? Mostly because I have already operated contests from four northern
European countries (LA, GJ, F and DL) and wanted to try operating from a place
in southern Europe. I wasn’t necessarily set on Crete, but I wanted
someplace I had never been to, something at least semi-rare from the DX
standpoint, a place with lots of available rental properties, and someplace
where I could operate without having to obtain some sort of special permission.
After examining Crete, it seemed to fill the bill so I found a good looking
rental house on one of the many rental property websites and began to put this
trip together.
A few interesting facts about Crete. The largest island in Greece, Crete has a
population of around 600,000 and is approximately 160 miles long and about 40
miles wide at its widest point. It is almost the furthest south you can go and
still be in Europe. In fact, at around 35 degrees north latitude (about the
same as Raleigh, North Carolina), it is further south than portions of northern
Africa. It is as far to the east as Bulgaria and the eastern point of the
island is nearly at the same longitude as the western edge of the European
portion of Turkey. It’s about 1300 miles from Crete to Frankfurt, 1700 miles
to London, 5,200 miles to New York, 7,100 miles to Los Angeles, and 6,100 miles
to Tokyo. Needless to say, due to its strategic position in the middle of the
eastern Mediterranean, Crete has been deeply involved in the complex history of
the region for thousands of years. The island is very mountainous and they say
that the snow never melts from the highest mountains (over 8,000 feet). Much
of the island is sparsely populated and there are olive trees just about
everywhere.
The information on my rental house said that the ocean was 50 meters away and
before my departure I experimented with various verticals which I hoped to
install on the beach. I wanted to be able to operate all bands, or at least 80
through 10, but I couldn’t find a satisfactory commercial antenna that would
fit into a suitcase. I did have a small telescoping antenna that collapses
down to 28 inches, and this would do for the high bands, but I still had the
problem of an antenna for 40 and 80. I decided to build a mast from fiberglass
tubing to support verticals and after experimenting in my back yard I found that
I could put together a pretty sturdy 25’ mast from 10 pieces of different
diameter fiberglass tubing each measuring about 32 inches. I ran wires for 40
and 80 up this mast and out the top in the form of an inverted L and tried it
out. It worked pretty well in the CWT contest I tried, so I decided to go with
this arrangement. But just in case, I also brought along a separate 20 meter
dipole, some ladder line, and 500 feet of no. 18 stranded wire.
When I arrived at the house on the Thursday afternoon before the contest, I
found that it was further from the water than advertised and that there was a
gravel road running between the house and the shore. I realized that I would
not be able to put my antennas on the beach as I had planned. This was
disappointing, but I had to adjust to the situation. I installed both the
telescoping antenna for the high bands and my homemade mast/vertical about 75
feet from the house, each with eight radials, and tried them out Thursday
evening. They worked and I had some pretty good pre-contest pileups, but I
could tell that I was not very loud. As I was nearly out of time, I decided to
go with this setup.
In this part of the world, 0000Z is 3 AM local time. I fortunately got a good
sleep before the contest started so at least I was feeling pretty good. But as
I feared, I did not get off to a very good start. I was barely maintaining a
rate of 50 per hour for the first 4-5 hours, which was not good enough for the
first part of a contest. In particular, I was not doing well on 40, a really
critical band due to the double points for all contacts there. My weird
homemade vertical was actually working better on 80 than 40. My operating
position was in front of a north-facing window in the living room and I had a
great view of the ocean any my antennas. As I operated Saturday morning, I
kept staring at the antennas trying to figure out what to do. I took two
breaks in the first 12 hours to make some adjustments and to install the 20
meter dipole, but I was still left with the problem of what to do about 40
meters.
Finally I decided I had to scrap my low band vertical and try something else.
I opted for a G5RV using my mast as a center support. I found a place about
midway between the house and the ocean and in an hour and a half managed to
remove the inverted L wires for 40/80 and install a 102 foot G5RV with a ladder
line matching section. The antenna location was about 30 feet above the ocean
with the ground sloping down to the sea, so I thought that this would add to
the antenna’s 25 foot height and that it should work pretty well.
Fortunately, it did. The antenna tuned well on all bands and was clearly
outperforming the vertical on most bands. Shortly after getting on with the
new antenna the rate meter hit 160 and I ended up with a 93 hour. Later on I
moved the vertical closer to the water and added more radials, which seemed to
help. Using this antenna, I sat on one frequency on 15 and had six straight
hours of between 60 and 70 contacts. However, many of these were one-point EU
contacts. Lots of fun but no substitute for those six pointers on 40.
One of the big problems during the weekend was the high noise levels on 40 and
80. There were big storms over Europe on Saturday and static was terrible, so
my 40 meter problem was not entirely the fault of my antenna. In 2013
operating from France, I had nearly 200 more contacts on 80 and 40 than this
year. I had 236 more total contacts this year but nearly the same score as
last year, so the poor performance on 40 really hurt. It seems that the
stations that do best on 40 meters are the ones who win this contest. There is
no substitute for those six pointers.
One other issue I had was my call sign. A large portion of European stations
had trouble copying it. Sometimes I had to send it 5-6 times very slowly and
even then some stations couldn’t copy it. Interestingly, NA and Japanese
stations had almost no trouble understanding. I had the same problem a few
years ago when I operated from Jersey as MJ/W1NN. Maybe the reason is that
when I work NA and JA stations in this contest, I am working the most
experienced ops, but when running EU I am working a lot of guys with less
experience. Nevertheless, I can’t understand why so many Europeans can’t
copy these calls since they should be accustomed to such calls as Europeans do
a lot cross-border operating. It was especially a problem on 40 and 80 and I
basically gave up S&Ping except with the good EU ops and NA and JA
stations. I simply had to pass up a lot of CQing stations out of fear that the
QSO would take 2-3 minutes. It was just a lot easier to call CQ.
One other thing I noticed was how strong the Japanese stations were. I had
over 80 JA contacts on four bands. Most called me and most were very loud,
generally louder than the loudest NA stations. This was a real (welcome)
surprise.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading and thanks for the contacts. I’m
already looking forward to the next one.
73, Hal W1NN
Sitia, Crete, Greece
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