[3830] CQWW CW 6Y7A SOAB HP

[kn5h at earthlink.net]

                     CQ Worldwide DX Contest - CW
                    
Call: 6Y7A
Operator(s): KN5H
Station: 

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Duncans, Jamaica
Operating Time (hrs): 36
 

Summary:
 Band     QSOs  Zones  Countries
-------------------------------
  160:      2      1      1
   80:    192     10     26
   40:    425     15     48
   20:    507     19     47
   15:    580     26     52
   10:   1057     27     72
-------------------------------
Total:   2763     98    246  =  2,230,152

Club/Team: 

Comments:

Number 1 lesson learned this year, do not rent a villa/QTH right on the beach.
It is hard to concentrate on the contest!!

We departed Phoenix 11pm Monday night and by Tuesday morning, we were at our
QTH. Customs was great with no problems. They were not interested in any of our
luggage so we cruised right through. 

We hit the beach as soon as we could and tried to catch up on some rest.
Tuesday evening set up was easy. I got the R7 vertical up and going in less
than an hour. It sat 20 ft from the water, with a clear view from Europe to
KH6. I began working JA and signals were great. It appeared conditions were
going to be awesome.

Wednesday morning's weather turned bad and the rain began. We opted to do the
'shopping thing' that me wife likes for some reason. Thursday's weather was
worse with heavy rains. The rain seemed to knock down the line noise but by the
time the weather cleared, the noise was back. During the contest it was
terrible. Sorry to those that I seemed to be ignoring. Next time, better rcving
antennas are mandatory. 

Friday morning the weather calmed down and I started trying to work 10 meters
with the vertical. The band instantly went dead and I feared the worst. The
vertical's matching box, which used to be watertight, had filled with water. I
blew it up with a short CQ. The weather was quite beautiful and I decided if
the vertical was toast, it would be time for snorkeling. So much for 48 hours
of serious operating. 

By 2200z, I had to decide how to approach the contest without my primary
antenna. I had an 80 mtr dipole and decided to cut the 2 legs of the antenna up
into sections, each being resonant on a different band. These sections were
held together with string so the whole mess would stay together. In order to
change bands I would have to lower the antenna and either connect or disconnect
the appropriate wire sections to make the dipole work on that band. My goal was
to get at least a 2:1 swr on each band and the swr meter did show that. For
those of you that wondered why I would not QSY, this is the reason. I found if
the antenna was 'cut' for 20, it wasnt going to work at all on any other band.
Sorry about that. 

I was going to use the 80 mtr dipole on 160 with some ladder line as the feed.
This plan also floundered when I nuked my carry-along matchbox. My only 160
qsos were with VP5GN and VP5MM. Good ears guys.

By Saturday morning, I had been outside a dozen times changing the length of
the antenna in order to QSY. The local security guys at the resort were amazed
at this, especially at 3am. I would have to explain what I was doing several
times and this wasted 10 minutes per band change. There sure seemed to be a lot
of different guards on duty, making for many repeats. This began to be a no-fun
situation and by mid morning Saturday, I found myself on the beach with a nice,
tall Rum and Coke. Remember the lesson learned? Here is where it applies.
Saturday evening and Sunday morning was a repeat of the prior day's operating
strategy, operating in the morning, on the beach all day.

If there are any other lessons learned, they may be:

- I have found, in my opinion, all you need from the Caribbean is a QTH on the
beach, a few trees and a good all band dipole. Keep it simple.
- Figure out how to take along a low-noise rcv antenna.
- Figure out how to get your logging software to work with a laptop running
Windows NT 4.0 prior to going on the trip OR be sure you are running Windows 95
or 98.
- Take extra wire in the event of emergencies.
- Buy more ice and Coke before you get there so you dont have to rent a taxi to
get to the store.

Thanks to all for the QSOs. See you next year.
73 de Steve KN5H/6Y7A


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