CQWW WPX Contest, SSB
Call: PJ4R
Operator(s): KK9A
Station: PJ4G
Class: SOAB LP
QTH: Bonaire
Operating Time (hrs): 36
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160:
80: 131
40: 836
20: 1070
15: 1161
10: 334
------------
Total: 3532 Prefixes = 742 Total Score = 9,907,184
Club:
Comments:
My wife and I made our first trip to Bonaire and we had a fantastic time. It is
a lovely, friendly country that appears to be built for scuba diving. There are
beautiful coral reefs just offshore. We have friends that are big into diving
that were staying at a local resort. This was the perfect opportunity for me to
get back into scuba diving after a long hiatus. So I did this and I really had a
blast diving in the underwater Marine Park. My wife and I have snorkeled many
times in Aruba, now she wanted to try diving so she took scuba lesions during
our visit and was also able to dive in the park.
We stayed at K2NG’s PJ4G house. The house and station is designed for
contesting. There are a number of efficient beams and wire antennas on the
towers and the property is located at the very top of a hill overlooking the
island and water. It is a nearly perfect location for radio. Noah typically sets
up many temporary RX antennas before each contest however I was not familiar
with how things are done up nor did I have much free time after spending my
vacation time below sea level. So, I basically just plugged my Elecraft K3S and
auto switching antenna relay into his TX coax leads. I had not operated WPX as
DX since 2009, things were very different this time. I anticipated having good
20m European openings after sunrise but instead my mornings were just a struggle
with slow rates and few DX stations. I had hoped to work a number of European
prefixes for multipliers on 20m instead I should have stayed on 40m a little
later working double point US stations. These were tough conditions, 90% of my
QSOs were with North America. Luckily in the afternoons 15m opened to North
America pretty well. The rate meter jumped to 180 QSOs/hour on the first day.
10m also had good openings to the north which I found surprising considering
that there were no sunspots. I was glad that I checked propagation frequently. I
had hoped for more QSOs and multipliers but it was still fun. I posted photos on
https://www.qrz.com/db/pj4r. Thanks for the QSOs, please QSL via WD9DZV.
John KK9A - PJ4R
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