[3830] ARRLDX SSB V31VP(@V31DL) M/S HP

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                    ARRL DX Contest, SSB

Call: V31VP
Operator(s): WB0TEV K5MDK
Station: V31DL

Class: M/S HP
QTH: Belize
Operating Time (hrs): 32

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:    1     1
   80:  226    46
   40: 1494    57
   20: 1459    61
   15:  969    58
   10:   25     5
-------------------
Total: 4174   228  Total Score = 2,855,016

Club: DFW Contest Group

Comments:

Point the yagi north and run 'em.  That seems to be the recipe for success in
the ARRL SSB DX contest from Belize.  This is the first time I'd operated in
this contest from V31 and the pileups were just endless.  I was ably assisted by
Mike (K5MDK/V31MK), who claims to not be a contester, but he did great and
hauled in about 40% of the QSOS.

Prior to this contest, the station here at Maya Hill had only a low dipole and
low windom for 80m, but Friday afternoon, Andre (the station owner) built a new
80m dipole.  With Andre and Mike as ground crew I climbed the tower and we
strung it up as an inverted V with the peak at about 60 feet.  It proved to be a
nice improvement, as I'm sure we would not have been able to catch the 46 mults
on 80 without it.  We could have made more QSO's on 80 than we did, but the
rates on 40 were a good bit better, so once we had a good mult count on 80 we
focused more on 40 at night.

I've run other SSB contests from down here over the last 18 months, but the
stream of callers in this contest was like no other.  It was just endless and we
could sit on one frequency and just run for hours on end, and we did!

On 40m we deliberately stayed above 7200, as we knew that the Europeans and most
running US stations would all be crowded below that border.  That kept us out of
the complete chaos that reigned from 7125-7200 and gave us breathing room.  40m
proved to be our most prolific band, with 20m not far behind. 

We only put in 32 hours of operating time, as we took Sunday morning and early
afternoon off to go to church and have lunch with friends, but then got back on
the air on 15m Sunday afternoon. Both of us took most of the wee small hours of
the night to assume horizontal polarization sleeping. 

During the daylight hours and even for a good while past sundown Saturday night
20m was the band that just kept on giving.  

Listening on 10m, all we could seem to hear were South Americans (Belize just
isn't far enough south).  In an attempt to get at least a few mults on 10m,
during a couple of 15m runs Sunday afternoon I repeatedly announced that I would
be in 28301 at a certain time a few minutes later to try and get folkw queued up
to listen for us.  That sort of worked, but the only decent signals came from
California and Arizona (spotlight).  Nonetheless, I was able to dig out
MD,TX,IL, along with CA and AZ.

In the mult department we swept the lower 48 and DC on 40,20 and 15 and came
close on 80. The only mults missed entirely were Labrador and Northern
Territories.   VY1AAA called in from the Yukon and I almost fell out of the
chair when VY0ERC called in to a Sunday afternoon run on 20m for Nunavut.  

I managed to get recordings of almost all the QSO's with K3IT's fine QSORDER
program and these should be accessible off the V31VP qrz.com page sometime next
week.

As always, a big thanks to Andre V31DL/DL1AS for the use of his fine station and
to his XYL Monika for the fine hospitality at the Maya Hill Lodge.  I'll be back
at the end of the month for a SOAB HP entry in the CQ WPX SSB test.

73,
Victor V31VP / WB0TEV


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