[3830] WPX SSB PJ4V(@PJ4DX) M/2 HP

[webform at b4h.net]

                    CQWW WPX Contest, SSB

Call: PJ4V
Operator(s): DK6SP M0SDV PJ4DX PJ4KY PJ4NX
Station: PJ4DX

Class: M/2 HP
QTH: Bonaire
Operating Time (hrs): 48

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
  160:   54
   80:  481
   40: 1282
   20: 2153
   15: 1508
   10:  381
------------
Total: 5859  Prefixes = 1252  Total Score = 27,969,680

Club: 

Comments:

It was a pleasure to host two young contest operators from Europe, Philipp DK6SP
and Jamie M0SDV, who was on his first contest operation outside the UK. This was
also the first multi-operator effort from this station in WPX - in the last four
years I have put in single op entries.

The contest started badly - really badly. Everything that could go wrong did, in
fact, go wrong. First I plugged a 110 / 220V power supply that had been switched
to 110V into the 220V supply. Bang! End of that power supply. Then 15 minutes
before the start of the contest while establishing a run frequency on 20m the
SWR went sky high. The Spiderbeam was lowered to ground level in the dark (that
was also a first) and it turned out two minuscule whiskers of teflon coax braid
had shorted against the inner inside the balun box. The balun was repaired
overnight but the antenna had to remain at ground level until first light. At
sunrise  we could also see that the 160m inverted-L had come down in the night.
The 40m vertical was also showing a high SWR (fortunately I had put up a 40m
inverted-V a while ago). Efforts to determine which antenna(s) were working
properly were thwarted by my antenna analyser also failing. However, by midday
Saturday everything was running properly again and that seemed to be the end of
the visits by Murphy, for this contest anyway.

Conditions continue to deteriorate each year. We found a couple of good openings
on 10m but despite some S9+ signals there did not seem to be much activity on
10m. 15m, 20m and 40m were much as expected, but 80m seemed poorer than usual.
160m, on the other hand, was quiet and with good propagation to EU but, again,
activity levels seemed to be low on top band.

This is not a 'mega station', consisting of a Spiderbeam at 35 feet and an
MW0JZE Hexbeam at 30 feet, both on push-up masts, plus wires for 40, 80 and
160m, so we were pleased to work over 6000 QSOs (including the inevitable dupes)
at this stage of the sunspot cycle.

73 Steve PJ4DX


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