ARRL DX Contest, CW
Call: PJ2T
Operator(s): W0CG N1ZZ NF9V W9VA WI9WI K2PLF N5OT N4RV
Station: PJ2T
Class: M/M HP
QTH: Curacao
Operating Time (hrs): 48
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160: 693 59
80: 1210 61
40: 1829 61
20: 2084 61
15: 1913 60
10: 953 58
-------------------
Total: 8682 360 Total Score = 9,351,720
Club: CCC
Comments:
Hats off to PJ4X for a super effort. Obviously the ABC Islands were the place to
be for this year's contest. Their shack and ours, respectively, made the largest
number of contacts worldwide in this contest. That's FUN!
As time goes by we are learning the lesson that fun and friendships matter more
than competition and plaques. Maybe that means we are maturing, or maybe it
means that we are getting old, or maybe it means that we are just getting lazy,
but regardless of the underlying philosophy we had a record amount of fun, made
some new friendships, and renewed some old ones.
Consistent with that new laid back philosophy we decided to take a very relaxed
approach to shift scheduling by passing around a blank schedule on Thursday and
having ops fill in whatever they wanted. In retrospect that may not have been a
good idea because we ended up with too many band-hours with radios sitting idle,
uncovered by operators. Lesson learned for next time. The margins in this
particular contest are extremely thin, we knew that going in, and yet allowed
ourselves to get a bit lax anyway.
The usual Murphy visits occurred, but nothing major. Too much time was spent
during good rate 40 meter time trying to troubleshoot a questionable
transceiver and finally opting to swap it out. We also had two operators out of
play for almost 10 hours while one took the other to the emergency room Saturday
evening. Everything turned out OK, thank goodness.
We had NO POWER OUTAGE and only about an eight hour outage of spots but, truth
be told, the spots are not super critical to us in the ARRL contest.
As always I thank the members of the CCC club group for their continuing
support of our station including some extremely loyal members who are seldom
able to travel here because of work or other issues, but who still support our
station, including N8NR, NP2L, N4QQ, and WA9S. Also special thanks to the XYLs
of WI9WI (Annette), N4RV (Gwyn) and N5OT (Kathy) who very generously gave up
some of their vacation time to help with all aspects of grocery shopping and
meal and kitchen work, and to cheerlead us in the operation. And I extend a
HUGE thank you and hug to my partner, Dorothy Dahlgren for all of her fabulous
support of our contest efforts. Without her love and patience and help I would
have lost heart and given up this effort years ago. We're now in our 10th year
together, and I am thrilled to publicly thank her in this forum.
Also special thanks to to Dr. Annette Gendron-Fitzpatrick, D.V.M. (KA9DOC), for
bringing syringes and needles and administering renewed rabies and FVRCP
vaccinations to Steve, the PJ2T cat, now in his sixth year at our QTH.
We are pretty well converted to use of N1MM+. It performed flawlessly for us
this weekend and we're all learning more about the software each contest and
becoming proficient.
I also thank Dan (N1ZZ, founder of West Mountain Radio, the Rigblaster man) and
Mark (N5OT) for climbing the Ridge with me Thursday to install a new 80 meter
dipole and balun box. Anywhere else a new dipole is no big deal, but here it's
a major fitness challenge with extreme heat, too much wind, and places that
require climbing up a near-vertical rock face with heavy backpacks and climbing
belts on board. This is not for the faint of heart, and these two guys hardly
broke a sweat. (And did I mention that Dan is 78?!!)
We were fortunate to host Rudy (NF9V) on his second trip to Signal Point. He's
a fabulous operator, a supremely nice guy, and is celebrating his new life
after retiring as a police officer. He got nailed badly by biting bugs and
allergies but soldiered on anyway and put in huge hours on 20 meters. Our
compliments to Bill, W9VA, who has been participating with me for over 20 years
in these contests and salute him on his upcoming 80th birthday this May. WI9WI
was here the weekend prior and piloted PJ2T in the WPX RTTY contest. It is
wonderful to see Jim back after a hellish year of surgery, a serious infection,
re-accomplishment of that surgery, and then seemingly in rehab forever until he
was able to walk again on his repaired ankle. It's great to see Jim going out
hiking in the mornings! K2PLF continues to inspire us all as he operates with
great speed and accuracy as Parkinson's keeps chasing him and he simply puts on
a smile, doubles down, adapts (CTRL-K), and keeps fighting back. And I thank
N5OT for his great operating skill and for his leadership and enthusiasm as he
leads our club into a capital campaign with skill and enthusiasm.
PJ2T is approaching a million QSOs and the 50th anniversary (November 2017) of
contesting from the Coral Cliff neighborhood of Curacao. We're still here and
going strong!
Look for us next weekend in ARRL SSB with a huge team from Georgia led by
K4UEE.
For the entire PJ2T team and CCC club,
- Geoff, W0CG, PJ2DX
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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