[3830] ARRLDX CW VP5K M/S HP

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                    ARRL DX Contest, CW

Call: VP5K
Operator(s): AC0W K0MD K0PC
Station: VP5K

Class: M/S HP
QTH: VP5
Operating Time (hrs): 48

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:  423    51
   80:  675    57
   40: 1258    62
   20: 1672    62
   15: 1200    60
   10:    0     0
-------------------
Total: 5228   292  Total Score = 4,577,976

Club: Minnesota Wireless Assn

Comments:

We escaped the Minnesota winter once again to enjoy a week in the Caribbean
sunshine of the Turks & Caicos Islands. This year we were at Harbour Rock,
the beautiful home owned by Jim K4QPL. Plenty of room and good antennas makes
this home a welcoming place for travelling hams and their spouses, the pool and
view don't hurt either. The hurricanes last year were hard on the islands in the
Caribbean but Turks & Caicos is recovering well.

The run up to the contest was the usual setting up the station and antennas. We
brought the K3/KPA500 combo and it was solid throughout the contest. Jim has all
the antennas on site but some assembly is required. 40M through 10M is handled
by a three element SteppIR, a dipole for 80M, and inverted-L for 160M. In spite
of some head scratching, savaging and a bit of "How do you think that
should go?", we had everything up and ready on Thursday before the
contest.

The contest started out strong on 40M which carried us into the wee hours of the
night. There was 20 over 9 noise on 80M & 160M overnight that limited our
QSOs severely. We only had a handful on 80M and a goose egg on 160M, it wasn't a
good omen for the low bands. We could see on the RBN that we were getting out
but could not hear anyone above the noise. The SteppIR continued to provide
great rates on 40M and up (with one significant exception) and we did a little
more head scratching on the low band antennas during the day on Saturday. We
didn't make any big changes to the inverted-L, just a tweak here and there. Our
low band strategy became pray for quiet conditions.

Our prayers were answered Saturday night with noise levels down around S3. In
spite of the terrible numbers Friday night we more than made up for it the
second time out. We ended up with our highest QSO totals ever on 160M by over
15% and a normal number of 80M QSOs. That saved the contest for us.

While 80 & 160 came around 10M remained AWOL the entire weekend. We didn't
expect a lot at this point in the cycle but we didn't expect to get shut out
either. We tried CQing on 10M multiple times both days and couldn't even get a
single spot on the RBN for our efforts, let alone a QSO with the coveted mult.
Some of the other stations in the Caribbean were more fortunate but the
propagation just wasn't there for us.

Thanks to all of you for making this another fun contest adventure. A special
thanks to our wives, Cindy (AC0W xyl) & Marlyn (K0PC xyl), who put up with
us our foolishness on their vacation and Jann (Scott's XYL) for giving him
permission to come alone for the long weekend of the contest.

73,
Bill AC0W, Scott K0MD, & Pat K0PC


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