[3830] CQWW CW PJ2T M/M HP

[webform at b4h.net]

                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW

Call: PJ2T
Operator(s): NA2U ZS6EZ KB7Q N5OT W0NB K2PLF K8ND W9NJY N7IR W0CG
Station: PJ2T

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

Summary:
 Band  QSOs   Zones  Countries
-------------------------------
  160:   734    21       67
   80:  1100    26       90
   40:  3141    34      114
   20:  2876    37      135
   15:  2732    37      129
   10:  2173    31       98
-------------------------------
Total: 12756   186      633  Total Score = 30,822,246

Club: Caribbean Contesting Consortium

Comments:

What a weekend. Murphy was upon us from the get-go.

For starters we lost KY7M from the team when his XYL Debbie had a heart attack
about two weeks prior to the contest. She is doing well in Phoenix and we're
celebrating her recovery. Then on Tuesday before the contest, W8WTS, our club
president, was on the way to Curacao when he was nailed by a cerebellar stroke
while deplaning from his Cleveland-Miami flight. He says he considers himself
very lucky because he received very rapid on-point care, was rushed to the
University of Miami hospital, and is now recovering. The hope is that he and
his XYL Janis will be able to get back to Cleveland tomorrow. Jim was FURIOUS
at this bad luck because it meant missing this great contest with good friends.
So we were down two operators as well as the DX Engineering 4-Square, which was
in Jim's luggage.

Thursday night when we were all trying to get to sleep the air conditioners
started blinking off. I found a hot fuse (Yep, "fuse"), replaced it,
went back to bed, and it happened three more times. Upon removing the cover
from that part of the AC box I spotted a piece of solid #6 Cu that was
literally glowing orange and sparking, and had dissolved itself down to about
#18 diameter. The accompanying fuse socket was destroyed from the heat. So we
shut it down to prevent a fire and slept hot and sweaty that night. On Friday
morning I went searching in the ruins of the Sunset Waters Beach Hotel and
found three fuse sockets that I liberated. After some mods I was able to use
one of those for a replacement, put in new #6 Cu, and all was cool and stable
after that. We have for years had "New AC System" on our project
list, of course, but there is always too much to do here and too little
resource with which to do it. We'll get it done eventually.

The contest started GREAT, and after 12 hours we were well ahead of last year's
line and exceeding our own expectations. The low bands were horribly noisy, but
what's new, it's the tropics! Then around 8 AM local time Saturday morning the
skies opened up and we had one of the monster lightning and rainstorms that
Curacao experiences approximately once every other year. The entire half acre
back yard flooded with over a foot deep backed-up water, we had torrential
waterfall flows from the back yard across the patios, including rocks and other
floating debris. Then at 10:01 AM there was one crack of lightning too many and
the commercial power failed. This was at a time we were running rates of almost
600/hour. We were back on the air in 10 minutes, running barefoot on the
generator, but rates of course suffered. After about two hours we decided to
hook up the 20 meter amp to the generator and ran it at about 400 watts out for
hours. (Our "generator" is a simple 5 KW camping generator.) Amazingly
the DSL stayed up during the storm and floods and we limped along by running
extension cords here and there to run critical equipment like the DSL modem.
The crock pot chili was kaput, so we transferred it to the propane stove. The
wind and rain continued to beat away mercilessly outside. Dorothy and I made a
run to town for more generator gas, discovering that the entire west end was
without power and beset with flooding everywhere.

The power outage lasted six hours and twenty minutes, far and above the worst
we have every seen here. We have lost power for less than an hour in the night
two or three times in 15 years of operation during contests, but never anything
like this.

To add to the fun, the 10 meter station was told that our CW note was raspy, so
we yanked that K3 out of service, then removed the replacement K3 because of
poor voltage regulation from the Astron RM-35, and ended up installing an
FT-2000 at that position. This fiasco cost us 45 minutes of very high rate time
on 10. The FT-2000 played fine the rest of the weekend, but we were down two
K3s.

One would think that enough was enough, but at 1 AM Sunday the DSL dropped and
we suffered 19 hours with no Internet connectivity, with it returning about 10
minutes before the end of the contest. Perfect. So our PJ2T skimmer may have
benefited others, but it did nothing for us. Dang. Then, in the midst of things
Sunday afternoon the AL-1200 at the 40 meter station began making HV popping
sounds. We opened it up and saw nothing obvious, but I went hunting for a
replacement power supply. After over an hour of sweat-soaked searching I found
those supplies in the East bedroom storage, even though the notes from a past
op said they were in the West bedroom. By then we decided to put that amp back
in service and try to force a hard failure. Following that we started
troubleshooting another AL-1200 that had the same symptoms, but it was not on
the air, so we tabled it until after the contest.

We ran N1MM+. We're trying to standardize on software so we decided to give
N1MM a good test in CQWW CW. Unfortunately we experienced something like seven
PC crashes to the blue screen of death. We liked N1MM and the networking is
beautifully intelligent, but this instability was unwelcome.

All this was in contrast to our usual experience when EVERYTHING works. Very,
very seldom do we have technical problems during a 48 hour contest operation.
Last month in CQWW SSB everything was 100% solid, running Wintest and
FT-2000s.

In spite of the bad luck, we posted a reasonable score. 10 meters was superb,
and 80/160 very challenging. 160 was only good for the last 90 minutes of the
contest. Thanks to K8ND for his patience and skills on 160, operating 12.5 hour
shifts both nights because of W8WTS' absence.

We were particularly excited to welcome Dr. Chris Burger, ZS6EZ to our team.
Chris had a very difficult time getting here because of visa nuances and the
terrorism-connected sensitivities at airports around the world. After aborting
his first attempt to get here Saturday before the contest, he rerouted himself
through Nairobi, convinced the balky officials there that his travel was legit,
and managed to get to Curacao the day before the contest. It was a treat to have
him here and hear his stories of world travels.

Huge thanks to Gene, KB7Q, who led the contest operation with good scheduling,
good planning, and good on-scene coaching. He had a blast pounding away on 40
meters with Fred, NA2U.

Additional huge thanks to Rick, N0YY, who designed the new PJ2T operating desks
and built the antenna switching system. The totally new PJ2T shack is fabulous,
fun to operate, and very powerful in antenna selection capability.

Thanks to NA2U, ZS6EZ, KB7Q, N5OT, W0NB, K2PLF, K8ND, W9NJY, and N7IR for
making the trip to Curacao, giving up Thanksgiving with their families, and
being patient with PJ2T's Ultimate Murphy Weekend.

      73,

          - Geoff, W0CG, PJ2DX


Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/