[3830] WPX CW VP2MDG M/S HP

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                    CQWW WPX Contest, CW

Call: VP2MDG
Operator(s): K2DM K2PS
Station: VP2MDG

Class: M/S HP
QTH: VP2M
Operating Time (hrs): 48

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
  160:     
   80:   61
   40:  717
   20: 1558
   15: 1715
   10:  348
------------
Total: 4399  Prefixes = 1296  Total Score = 17,639,856

Club: Florida Contest Group

Comments:

George, K2DM, invited me to join him at his station at the Gingerbread Guest
House on the island of Monserrat for the contest.  He and I had met some years
back at the FRC Golf Open back up in Pennsylvania, but we now live in the same
(antenna-restricted) retirement community in The Villages, Florida.  The chance
to operate from a fairly rare location, and experience some good run rates for a
change was really appealing.  

I thought the trip from Florida to the Caribbean would be fairly quick, but a
van ride, followed by three separate flights and lots of wait times meant that
the door to door travel took about 14 hours!  Since the volcanic eruption of
1995, which washed away the big airport, there are no direct flights to the
island from the US, and so it becomes a bit tougher to get here.  Tourism is
limited, and there is not much in the way of fancy resort hotels.  But George
has built a very fine station, with a 55' motorized crankup tower, and so we
were able to assemble a Classic 33 tribander, with a 40 meter two element yagi
just below it for a pretty competitive situation.  An 80 meter vee we attached
to the top of the tower rounded out the antenna complement, although I did also
set up a 3 element 6 meter beam which managed to muster about four total QSOs,
all in the Caribbean.

We had lots of fun handling some huge pileups on SSB prior to the contest, and
also scheduled a couple of time slots to work the folks in our local TVARC
club.  Amazingly, we managed to contact about 15 stations back in The Villages.
 Antennas there range from disguised flagpoles, screwdrivers, hidden wires, to
indoor dipoles.

I got assigned a new Montserrat license, VP2MPS, which I needed to pick up and
pay for when I got to the island.  The licensing offical there, Monica, was
extraordinarily helpful, and I could see that she had been softened up by K2DM
on earlier visits by virtue of the prominent FRC mousepads and drinking mug,
which she was actually using when we stopped by!  VP2MPS had been listed under
a different call holder, but had been dormant for awhile.  My email to that
individual was responded to with the indication that he was now a silent key. 
But until I could get QRZ.com to release the callsign to me, a few callers
questioned how I could be a silent key and how I must be a pirate!  Aarr!

George and I split the 48 hours evenly, mostly 2 hours on, 2 hours off, using
his assigned call, VP2MDG.  The pileups were constantly huge, with many callers
giving out very low serial numbers - clearly working us for DXCC counters.  It
was lots of fun too, to get called by many (to us) exotic callsigns.  We used
N1MM for the first time, and while we did have some issues, they were all due
to our unfamiliarity with the program.  I've been a Writelog user for many
years, but I'm sold.  There are so many nice features built in that I didn't
realize I needed.  I can't see going back.

In retrospect, we should probably have spent more time on 40 for those big
point value Qs, even if the rate had slowed.  But the addictive rates on 20 and
15 were tough to let go.  I think though, we were both quite satisfied with our
efforts.

Had to leave Monday after George and I got the antennas down, as I've got to
hustle up to DC for my son's wedding, and George had an extra day to get all
the equipment properly marked and stowed.

Great fun!

73, Pete, K2PS/VP2MPS


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