[3830] ARRLDX SSB WP2AA(KK9A) SO Unlimited LP

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ARRL DX Contest, SSB

Call: WP2AA
Operator(s): KK9A
Station: WP2AA

Class: SO Unlimited LP
QTH: St Croix, VI
Operating Time (hrs): 43

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:   60    23
   80:  316    45
   40:  541    53
   20: 1336    60
   15: 1458    55
   10:  224    39
-------------------
Total: 3935   275  Total Score = 3,246,375

Club: 

Comments:

My wife and I made a trip to St. Croix for a vacation and contest expedition. It
is really a fun vacation destination. We enjoyed snorkeling by Hotel on the Cay,
trying new restaurants and just driving around exploring the island. I brought a
Force12 C3S, an Elecraft K3S and a Top Ten band decoder with antenna relay box
to use in the contest. Setting up the beam and radio equipment went very
quickly just as planned. The C3S was installed about 30 feet high on a sloping
terrain about 300 feet above the sea and I hung low band dipoles just below it.
The C3S seemed to work pretty well even with low power. At this part of the
solar cycle I knew that any 10m openings would be short lived and spotty. With
only one transceiver, I found the spotting network to be quite useful in
monitoring band openings. Even 15m had spotty propagation at times but it
produced the most QSOs. 20m was also very good during daylight hours. I had
some power line noise which seemed worse on 20m however I still had the most
multipliers and the second best QSO total on this band. 40m appeared to be in
great shape but the low inverted V seemed ineffective. With 20m closing early
this had a huge impact on my score. The 80m inverted V mounted on the same
support seemed to work OK. My K3S transceiver with the Top Ten automatic
antenna switch worked perfectly making it easy to click on spots or pass
multipliers to other bands. It was nice activate WP2AA for the third
consecutive year. Unfortunately this time the country list had me incorrectly
listed as being in the US. According to the DXCC list WP2 is a USVI call and
the contest rules would not allow this callsign to be used from the US.
Nonetheless, the country list still caused some confusion all weekend long
which was apparently most noticeable to those using the N1MM logger. This issue
has been corrected and I hope that people did not delete my QSO thinking that it
was invalid. I would like to thank everyone for the QSOs.  Working stations on
more than one band adds to the fun and six band contacts are really special. I
would like to give an extra thanks to W8MJ, ND4Y, W1CTN, W1CSM, CG3AT, K4AB,
W9RE, W3MF, W3EKT and KE3X for working me on all six bands. On Monday after the
contest it rained hard for most of the day plus there were numerous power
outages. This was our last day on the island so we had the unpleasant task of
working outside in the rain to remove and disassemble the beam and other
antenna. My XYL, Leslie was a big help in winding up the coax cables and ropes
and packing the items. We were able to finish packing and put the house back to
its normal condition before our lovely last night lobster dinner at Duggan’s. 
There are a few pictures http://www.wp2aa.com .  Please QSL via WD9DZV.

73,
John KK9A aka WP2AA


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