[3830] OnQP VE3ZF M/S HP

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                    Ontario QSO Party

Call: VE3ZF
Operator(s): VE3ZF VE3HZQ VE3NDI
Station: VE3ZF

Class: M/S HP
QTH: Manitoulin Island
Operating Time (hrs): 

Summary:
 Band  CW Qs  Ph Qs  Mults
---------------------------
  160:                   
   80:   15      28    29
   40:   54     282   128
   20:    8     352    83
   15:   12     358    63
   10:    2       2     2
    6:                   
    2:            9     1
---------------------------
Total:   91    1031   306  Total Score = 390,456

Club: Contest Club Ontario

Comments:

Another expedition to Manitoulin Island is now behind me. I arrived to
Manitoulin a week in advance to prepare for the Ontario QSO Party and used the
time to set up all of our antennas. 
However, the unexpected happened 3 hours before OnQP - our main antenna, a 3
elements Spider beam, was subjected to severely strong winds and was damaged.
This Spider has been with me in many DX-peditions, over the course of many
years and has never shown any problems in the past. Not even during the last CQ
WW,
where the Spider successfully survived the outer outskirts of hurricane Sandy,
which were around 100 kilometers per hour; I guess Manitoulin's winds are
something special.

During the next 2 hours the Spider was lowered back down to the ground. Working
in a heavy snow storm, we disassembled the antenna, fixed it and assembled back.
Finally, after replacing 30 meters of thick coax cable, the antenna was erected
back to a height of 10 meters.It was a terribly laboriously task, but our team
- VE3ZHQ, VE3NDI, VE3LJM worked as fast as humanly possible. With only an hour
to spare before the  OnQP, we had the Spider Beam raised and ready for the
contest.

When the Contest started, the condition was very good. I really enjoyed having 
pile-ups on 40, 20 and 15 meters. The most impressive QSO was with FR4NT on 40
meters - he broke through the European pile-up, thanks to my phased verticals,
which worked perfectly as always!

Unfortunately, the challenges with the antennas weren't done yet - at 10 pm on
Saturday when I QSY to 80 meters I encountered one final surprise - Inverted V
on 80 and 160 meters, which was at the top of the tree was not tuned anymore -
the strong wind destroyed Inverted V as well. Luckily, I had a spare AP8A on 80
meters and installed it on the beach of Lake Huron in the next 30 minutes in the
full dark. Sadly the 160 meters antenna was lost.

At the end of OnQP we had more than 1000 QSOs. The difficulties we encountered
with the wind and snow storms greatly mitigated our results this time around,
as we all expected to perform better.

Thank you very much to all who called us during OnQP 2013.

73! Igor VE3ZF


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