[3830] CQWW CW V31RM(@V31MD) M/2 HP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW

Call: V31RM
Operator(s): N3DXX KN5H
Station: V31MD

Class: M/2 HP
QTH: Belize
Operating Time (hrs): 45

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:  343    11       23
   80:  486    16       44
   40: 1728    33      103
   20: 1417    32       82
   15: 1637    29       89
   10: 1183    24       56
------------------------------
Total: 6794   145      397  Total Score = 8,263,874

Club: Frankford Radio Club

Comments:

Art N3DXX and I started planning this trip almost immediately after our 2003
6Y6X trip. The line noise in Montego Bay is so bad we were totally wiped out on
40, 80 and 160. Finding a place with no noise was imperative. Usually villa
owners will have no idea what you are talking about if you ask about these
things so it seemed logical to contact a ham with an existing station as that
owner would know his own station’s environment. I was reading through the Texas
DX Society mail reflector archives when I saw that Don, N5DD had just returned
from Belize. He has a very nice picture QSL that tempted us even more. A few
emails later we were convinced that there was no line noise and the station was
already built, complete with tribander, vertical, radio and amp. We contacted
Bob, V31MD and  he confirmed availability. Licensing was easy and we had our
calls long before November (unlike Jamaica where I got 6Y6X 2 days prior to
departure). Art decided to go down early and stay longer so he was the
designated driver. It was a 3 hour drive from the main airport in Belize City to
the QTH in Placencia. The challenge was the last 25-30 miles which was an awful
dirt road where 15 mph was the maximum speed. We installed a dual band 80/160
atop a nice 40 foot tilt-over pole with the help of Val, the multi-talented
caretaker of the property. After some pruning and re-arranging the antenna
seemed to load up nicely on both bands. V31MD has a Butternut vertical in the
saltwater swamp that was tuned for 75 mtrs so we pondered changing it to CW but
since the dipole loaded, we left the vertical alone. That was a good thing too
because that antenna was superb. The 40 meter performance was phenomenal. Ah,
the magic of salt water. Our two KW stations had very little interaction, the
only issue was the 40 mtr station hearing the 80 mtr station. We sustained high
rates throughout the contest. I had thought that by Sunday afternoon we would
have ran out of stations to work but that was not the case. There were only a
few idiotic busted-call packet pileups and a tolerable number of dupes except
for KG7H who for some reason wanted to work us 6 times on every band. Not having
internet access probably cost us 10 countries/zones per band and that hurt the
total. We packed everything Sunday night anticipating my departure early Monday
morning. Art drove me to the airport for my 8 am flight. I arrived at the
airport 30 minutes early to the sight and sound of a very upset airline ticket
agent that informed me I was late. My plane was preparing to taxi and I had
missed the flight due to a stupid mis-read of departure time vs. arrival time.
The only real problem with this was not having to spend another day in the
beautiful tropical country of Belize, but having to call my wife and tell her I
would be a day late. Thanks to everyone from Art and myself for all of the QSOs
and QSYs and sorry to those we could not pull through either due to QRM or QRN.
Check out the web page at http://home.earthlink.net/~kn5h for photos. See you
next year from somewhere. 73 de Steve KN5H and Art N3DXX


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