Fellow Topbanders:
Myself Dan K8RF, and Doug K4LT have just returned from St. Paul Island.
I just got home after an exhausting trip fraught with both problems and
good accomplishments!
We had originally planned a Major operation, with a group of myself and
five top notch operators.
We were to enter the WPX CW Contest as a Multi-Multi entry, with a great
team of guys.
Bob Vallio W6RGG whose list of accomplishments in the DX World would be
too long to list, was to be our powerhouse on 20 Meters.
His fellow YASME Board Member, "Mac" Mc Henry Jr. W6BSY was our 10 Meter
man.
Mac and Bob had arranged for the operation to count for the YASME Award
program, which I was very honored about.
Doug Kline K4LT (ex: WD8AUB) a veteran of Multi-Op stations W8AV, VP5VW,
VP5FOC, VP5FXB was going to handle his favorite band 40 Meters.
Two of Doug's fellow Mad River Radio Club members, Stan Arnett AC8W and
Hank Kohl K8DD who you might have worked from KH0, C6A, etc. were to
tackle 15 and 80 Meters.
I choose the only one foolish enough to listen to QRN all night, myself
Dan K8RF, to try and squeeze out some QSO's on 160 Meters, which I seem
to enjoy for some reason...
Well, I just got home a few minutes ago, so I have only read a few
e-mails, so I don't know what information has been put out on the
reflector, but what happened in a nutshells is that we had problems
getting the 2100 LB's of gear to the operating location, which almost
caused a complete cancellation of the operation, since K4LT, W6BSY, AC8W
and K8DD were all flying into Halifax on a rather tight schedule, when
the transportation problems occurred I asked them to cancel their
flights completely, since it was not looking good as far as launching
any time near the scheduled time frame.
So after Bob W6RGG had to endure a very long 2600 Mile journey in my old
Ford Van for nothing other than a scenic ride through the entire East
Coast, which neither I or Bob had the pleasure of visiting before, with
the end result Bob flying back home very tired and disappointed.
I know he had been really looking forward to operating with his long
time close friend Mac W6BSY.
What then happened was Doug K4LT and myself reluctantly decided to jump
in Doug's Truck and go up by ourselves, and entering the WPX Contest as
a Multi-Single.
We had very mixed feeling about going at all at this points, as we knew
the other team Members had worked so hard and invested a lot of time and
money in planning the operation.
We ended up taking small fraction of the original complete SIx Station
setup.
So we drove straight through, with out stopping,the 1850 Miles to Bay
St. Lawrence, NS to catch a boat ride with our fantastic Boat Captain,
Mr. Robert MacLellan who landed us on St. Paul on the morning of
Thursday May 27th.
We got on the air a little after 0100 GMT May 28th.
We entered the WPX CW Contest as a Multi-Single and made 4840 QSO's
during the Contest and another 1500-2000 before and after the WPX
Contest.
Our M/S Score was some 14.4 Meg, looks like a possible new M/S World
record!.
However, it is a bittersweet victory......
We only wish W6RGG, W6BSY, K8DD and AC8W where there with us, after all
their hard work!!!
Doug K4LT and I K8RF would like to let it be known we could not have
done it with out the help of the rest of the group of operators, and
also behind the scenes: Noel W9EFL, Tom W8TK, Steve N8LGP, Geoff W0CG,
CUSHCRAFT, ALPHA POWER, GDXF, YASME, and others I am too tired to
remember at this time.
The bad news was that we had S9+20DB constant noise from the generator
on 160 Meters, which resulted in no operation on my favorite band, 160
Meters. (80 Meters was also not too great, made few QSOs there)
(FYI: Look for the CY9SS group next week on 160!)
My sincere apologies to all those who needed CY9 for a new one on
Topband, I can't tell you how much I was looking forward to putting
CY9RF into your Logbooks on 160.
(Hope we at l.east gave you a new one on 80-10 Meters!)
Please send QSLs for CY9RF to:
Dan Flaig CY9RF/K8RF
2101 Ronaldson Ave.
Cincinnati, Ohio
45230-1510
(My Callbook address (Moms QTH) also works fine, but will get cards a
couple of days sooner if you use one listed above!)
Please send SAE and postage or IRC/ $1 for direct Airmail reply!
That's it for, now I need to get some sleep!.....
73
Dan K8RF
CY9RF Team leader (and Chief Screw up!)
PS:
Many thanks to CUSHCRAFT for supplying beams for 10-20 Meters which
performed flawlessly, including 80-100 MPH winds which blew for hours on
end Sunday night!!!!!!
The A3S Tribander kicked butt all the time and survived the winds
without so much as a bent element!!!!
(I am not making this up, the wind was absolutely unbelievable, the 40
meter Vertical we had, which was made of very large diameter tubing (2")
was flexing about 12" in the middle!)
Thanks again to Steve Best, the President of CUSHCRAFT for taking a
personal interest in our operation.
Also thanks to John W0UN at Alpha power, who loaned us an Amp that
didn't end up making the trip due to our transpoirtation problems, if we
would of had the 91B instaed of the smaller Ten Tec AMP (Which worked
great, but 811's just aren't 4CX800's!!!!!)
--
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