[3830] CQWW CW 6Y3A M/S Score and loooong story
Nace, Steven
snace@adaptivebroadband.com
Fri Dec 3 16:40:32 EST 1999
1999 CQ WORLD WIDE DX CONTEST
Call used: 6Y3A
Location: 08, Jamaica
Category: Multi Single
Mode: CW
Power: 1500
Callsign of Operators: KN5H, KB3EHU
band QSOs points zones ctys
160 279 567 10 18
80 953 2175 19 64
40 960 2243 21 62
20 840 1830 29 71
15 1129 2764 30 74
10 1544 3821 28 81
TOTAL 5705 13400 137 370
SCORE: 6,793,800
Rig: Kenwood TS570, Alpha 91b
Antennas: R7 dummy load, dipoles, INV L
Name: Steven Nace KN5H
PO Box 7666
Chandler, AZ 85246
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We began planning this trip right after the 99 ARRL DX CW contest. Somewhere
along the way I saw a web page that showed PA3EWC and PA3ERC as they
traveled
to 6Y5 and ZF2. I emailed them and asked about 6Y5, where they stayed and if
the owners were worried about ham radios. After finding out the villa would
be
perfect for radios and my wife, I then emailed Ken K2KW for more advice
about
6Y5. Ken and crew had just set the 1998 CW WW DX CW contest multi multi
world
record as 6Y2A from Discovery Bay Jamaica. Ken was very, very helpful and I
could not have succeeded if it were not for his help.
I emailed the villa owner and he confirmed that radios were not a problem.
He didn't really understand what the big deal was so I didn't elaborate,
just
telling him we wouldn't destroy any of the surrounding garden made him
happy.
My wife gave the final approval after noting the pool, AC and cable TV.
Email me for info on the villa or you can check it out at:
http://www.royalvacation.net/carib.htm
Licensing was a breeze. The application is on the Jamaican Amateur Radio
Club's home page: http://www.buyjamaica.com/jara/ I faxed a few other
documents to Kingston and within 6 weeks I was licensed. I also included a
special request for a contest only call which was happily granted.
I talked Art KB3EHU into joining me and we were a team. We decided to take
2 of everything except the amp and the computer. I packed the Alpha 91b, the
TS850, power supply, old laptop, R7 vertical, coax and wire into 2 suitcases
and 1 golf club carrier. The suitcase with the Alpha was way overweight so I
removed the transformer and put it in a separate suitcase. The juggling of
weight was designed to keep the bags to less than 70 lbs, which didn't work
anyway. Art was to bring his TS570, power supply, coax and wire.
We departed the Saturday before the contest from Phoenix, destination
Orlando. The America West airline folks in Phoenix immediately saw $ signs
when the spotted my 9 bags. After all the weighing in, I owed them an
additional $150 for just the Phoenix to Orlando leg. We arrived in Orlando,
lugged all 9 bags to our hotel room and collapsed. This was supposed to be
fun.
Sunday morning we found ourselves at the Air Jamaica ticket counter in the
Orlando Airport. They again saw $ signs, only a lot bigger ones. Any bag
over 70 lbs was automatic $105 and I had 2 of them. After calming my wife
and myself down (not an easy task) a most fortunate event occurred. One of
the skycaps suggested we unpack enough stuff to get the bags less than 70
lbs, put all that in another box and only get charged $40. We rejoiced and
tipped him an enormous amount.
Now we had 10 pieces of luggage but we were on the plane waiting to depart,
watching out the window as the baggage handlers threw our heavy suitcases
full
off fragile radio gear on the conveyor belt. I was ready for sedation by
then
and thankfully the Air Jamaica crew had lots of cold Red Stripe beer.
Art was to be in Montego Bay earlier that same day and we knew he would have
no problem clearing Jamaican customs as he only had 2 normal looking
suitcases and a carry on. The baggage claim in the Mo Bay airport is small
and gets packed after a flight arrival. Art found himself surrounded by over
100 other travelers as he waited in line at customs. For some unknown
reason, they picked him out of the crowd to inspect and when the saw the
TS570
and power supply in his luggage, more $ signs appeared. It appears the
Jamaicans raise revenue by charging approximately 120% duty on some items
brought in the country and these radios could net them a nice chunk of
change.
They promptly confiscated his gear demanding a 'permit'. The closest thing
we
had to a permit was our licenses and that didn't seem good enough. After 4
hours of customs hassles, Art met us right there in the baggage claim as he
never left! He related his story and I thought I was never going to get
through as we looked very strange with our 10 pieces. Oddly, the only thing
of
interest was the box the Orlando skycap packed for us. They opened it, saw
bunch of coax, wire and string, frowned (no $ signs) and sent us on our way.
We still had Art's radio problem however and tempers were growing short. I
showed them the 6Y3A license plus the application I had faxed to Kingston.
Ken K2KW told me to include all the equipment model and serial numbers on
the
license application. This advice was probably the key to us getting out of
there. They studied all this, asked about the 'permit' and all we could say
was "what permit?" Finally, they gave up their attempts as there were other
tourist-fish to fry. They decided on a $500 user fee instead. Wow, that
would
practically deplete our spending money! More delays followed as that amount
was recalculated again and again until the amount ended up at $100. That was
a
lot better and we were very happy to know we were soon to be out of there.
The cashier asked us for the $100 and after giving her 5 Andrew Jacksons, we
were told, "No Mon, 100 dollars Jamaican". Finally a break, $100J = $2.50US
!
We decided that renting a car may be difficult since the Jamaicans drive on
the 'other' side of the road. We elected to go with the Villa's designated
driver. He was surprised at all the luggage but smiled when we gave him a
big
tip. We made it to the villa just before sunset, collapsed around the pool
and
looked out over the Caribbean from our hilltop vantage pretending we could
see
all the way to the US, Japan and Europe.
After a short dinner, we began unpacking. Fearing the worst, we could only
hope our gear was intact. The amp survived, the TS850 worked and the old
laptop even booted up. We tossed up the 160/80 mtr inv L, threw out the
radials and crossed our fingers that the thing would be resonant. It
appeared a little long but still showed a 1.3:1 at 1820. We trimmed the 80
inv L and within less than an hour, we were working the gang on the low
bands.
The next morning we put together the R7, managed to get it about 10 feet off
the ground and we were QRV on all 6 bands. The vertical had a clear shot to
N
America, JA, EU and AFR, straight over the water from our 600 foot hillside
villa. We did however seem to have a problem to the South but couldn't
really
do much about it so why worry.
The pileups were amazing. We had not really anticipated such a big interest,
especially on CW. Things went well until Murphy struck the TS850 on
Thursday.
It decided to stop working just as it had in the past. Kenwood promised it
to
be fixed and it gave out just when we needed it most. This was very
demoralizing but we had never really planned on a true multi-single so there
wasn't going to be a mult station anyway. So, the TS570 was called into
service. That radio has a separate key input on the back for both paddles
and
a computer. The 850 only wanted the normal keying line plug, the 570 wanted
a
smaller one. Of course, this was one thing we didn't have. I asked the
driver
if there was a Radio Shack around, "No Mon" was the answer. How about a
computer store? Well, sort of. We ended up at the store and were surprised
to
see lots of connectors, PL259s, some right angle connectors, but no
miniature
phone plugs. We ended up with a set of Sony walkman headphones that had the
correct size plug for a bargain price of $4 US. Yes, I had just paid $4 for
a
39 cent connector.
By now we had also determined that the vertical just wasn't doing a good
job.
We had casually thrown a 40 dipole up and it was far superior to the R7. We
dropped it down, cleaned it up and had up about 40 ft in the air before the
contest. It was at least 2 full S units better than the vertical. We tried
it
on 15 and although it showed a 1.8:1 SWR, it also outperformed the vertical.
With this in mind, we built an 80 mtr inv V, got it up about 40 ft and saw
it
vastly outperform the inv L. At least we had a variety to play with.
By Friday night we felt ready to go. We sat down to an early dinner at
5:45pm local. We had over an hour to eat and then establish a frequency.
This didn't seem to be a problem and with 20 min before the start, we tried
to
find a hole in the band, any band. This was probably the biggest mistake of
the contest, not being established with an existing pile up. As a result the
first hour rate was poor. We got in the groove and soon discovered one
advantage of the pileup, it keeps you frequency clear! No worrying about
being
crowed as many stations don't seem to zero beat you and call high and low.
Our rates as shown in these numbers:
UTC 160 80 40 20 15 10 rate total
00Z 0 0 14 134 0 0 148 148
01Z 0 46 0 71 0 0 117 265
02Z 0 100 1 0 0 0 101 366
03Z 0 150 0 0 0 0 150 516
04Z 0 140 0 0 0 0 140 656
05Z 0 48 99 0 0 0 147 803
06Z 0 0 167 0 0 0 167 970
07Z 42 0 97 0 0 0 139 1109
08Z 0 0 127 0 0 0 127 1236
09Z 28 40 37 0 0 0 105 1341
10Z 21 2 116 0 0 0 139 1480
11Z 0 0 80 0 0 39 119 1599
12Z 0 0 0 0 0 133 133 1732
13Z 0 0 0 0 0 109 109 1841
14Z 0 0 0 0 0 156 156 1997
15Z 0 0 0 0 0 159 159 2156
16Z 0 0 0 0 13 94 107 2263
17Z 0 0 0 0 0 160 160 2423
18Z 0 0 0 0 15 150 165 2588
19Z 0 0 0 0 197 0 197 2785
20Z 0 0 0 0 193 0 193 2978
21Z 0 0 0 0 48 52 100 3078
22Z 0 0 0 0 4 94 98 3176
23Z 0 0 0 69 62 0 131 3307
00Z 0 2 2 150 0 0 154 3461
01Z 47 0 69 0 0 0 116 3577
02Z 98 27 0 0 0 0 125 3702
03Z 0 139 0 0 0 0 139 3841
04Z 0 94 0 0 0 0 94 3935
05Z 0 79 0 0 0 0 79 4014
06Z 33 52 0 0 0 0 85 4099
07Z 3 0 89 0 0 0 92 4191
08Z 6 31 28 0 0 0 65 4256
09Z 1 3 34 0 0 0 38 4294
10Z 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4294
11Z 0 0 0 3 12 0 15 4309
12Z 0 0 0 0 116 0 116 4425
13Z 0 0 0 0 42 42 84 4509
14Z 0 0 0 8 92 1 101 4610
15Z 0 0 0 0 74 0 74 4684
16Z 0 0 0 0 137 0 137 4821
17Z 0 0 0 1 6 118 125 4946
18Z 0 0 0 0 0 202 202 5148
19Z 0 0 0 0 17 34 51 5199
20Z 0 0 0 80 9 0 89 5288
21Z 0 0 0 124 1 0 125 5413
22Z 0 0 0 46 90 0 136 5549
23Z 0 0 0 153 1 1 155 5704
tot 279 953 960 839 1129 1544 ---- 5704
The only final hurdle to clear was the old laptop problem that I knew we
would have. I could not afford a newer, better machine so this older model
would have to do. It only had enough memory for about 3400 QSOs. This would
mean stopping sometime during the contest, closing out that file and
restarting again. Of course now all multiplier tracking was wiped out. We
had no way of knowing if any station we searched and pounced on was a dupe.
So, we basically decided to just run stations and hope the mults would call
us. This was the second biggest mistake of the entire contest.
We ended up with the numbers shown above. Low mults due to no second station
and a very poor logging computer. We were happy with our QSO total and
didn't
really see the dupe rates I had expected.
Art had to leave Mo Bay early, before the contest was over as he needed to
be home Monday morning. At 7PM, I started the packing and 3 hours later all
was done. The R7 vertical that I had so carefully packed was thrown in the
golf club carrier. All the dipoles, leftover wire and coax was left there. I
was very worried about paying big surcharges due to overweight conditions.
Actually, the Air Jamaican ticket counter's scales were not working so I
could
have gone over without a problem. To top things off, another Orlando skycap
came to our rescue. When we arrived at the Orlando airport to catch our
flight
to Phoenix, I was ready to pay another hefty fee for too many bags. The
airport was swamped, even at 6am. The skycap asked why we needed to carry
all
our bags inside, after all he could check them at the curb. I told him about
my excess luggage problems and he said he would save us a lot of grief by
checking the bags at the curb and pretend he didn't see any of our
carry-ons.
He ended up saving me about $100 and I gave him VERY large tip. Bottomline,
I
could have brought home all my antennas, wire and coax. Oh well.
In summary, the trip was quite an event. We saw practically all of the
country of Jamaica that a tourist could see. We made over 8000 QSOs
during our stay. We had great moments of operating, especially during the
contest. A few bad operators that would not ever stop signing their calls
when I was trying get a fill really surprised me. I thought people had more
sense than to continually QRM others when they know a fill is needed.
Next year we will be out somewhere again, this time with a better laptop,
better radios and all dipoles!
73 to all,
Steve KN5H
Art KB3EHU
Karen
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