[3830] CQ160 CW PJ2T Multi-Op HP

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                    CQ 160-Meter Contest, CW - 2019

Call: PJ2T
Operator(s): W8WTS
Station: PJ2T

Class: Multi-Op HP
QTH: Curacao
Operating Time (hrs): 26:15

Summary:
Total:  QSOs = 1359  State/Prov = 57  Countries = 74  Total Score = 1,766,797

Club: Mad River Radio Club

Comments:

Congratulations to the team at TK0C for their first place claimed score!

There are at least 17 Multi-Op entries with claimed scores exceeding 1 million
points, still not close to the thirty (30!) that achieved that score in the
legendary 2009 running of this contest, but notable!

This is the tenth year Jim W8WTS and Jeff K8ND/PJ2ND operated PJ2T
multi-operator in CQWW 160 CW from the Signal Point PJ2T station near Santa
Martha Bay in Curacao. Jeff operated a few years as a Single-op entry.

I believe that this is the twelfth year that we have had the DX Engineering
4-Square RX antenna system available to us for the contest. In addition to
supplementing the two Beverages (1000-foot Europe, 880-foot USA/JA) for other
directions in the operator’s ears, it also provides one of the antennas for
the diversity receiving scheme, and another antenna connected to a SDR receiver
generating spots through CW Skimmer. 

The Beverages are permanently installed, but the DXE 4-square is only installed
‘Field Day Style’ when needed for a contest – usually for CQWW CW and CQWW
160 CW Contests. This involves spooling out 1000-feet of RG-6 feedline and #20
power wire through the wabi (i.e. spiny brush) to a semi-open field and
installing the four whips and center box there. We have pre-installed posts for
mounting with some radials left there to provide a semblance of ground on top of
the coral rock surface. Then, at the end of the contest, with the aid of a
heavy-duty DeWalt drill, the feedline and wire need to be re-spooled for next
time! Disassembly and re-stowing this time was aided by Geoff W0CG / PJ2DX, who
arrived on the last day of the contest.

As we have done for many years, we used four SDR-IQ Software Defined Radio
receivers, each connected to a different receiving antenna (two Beverages, the
DXE 4-square, and an 80-meter inv-V mounted 240 feet above the station on a
ridge in the direction of Europe). Each SDR-IQ receiver feeds a separate
instance of CW Skimmer on one of two laptops, and the four spot streams (along
with the spots from the off-site PJ2A Skimmer Server and the PacketCluster) are
combined in VE7CC software to provide a single spot stream to the N1MM bandmap
for the operator. A block diagram of the skimmer scheme is online at:
http://www.k8nd.com/Radio/Planning/CQWW160/PJ2T_CW_Skimmer_CQWW160CW_2018.pdf

Not too much changes for us from year to year, but this is the first year that
we used one of the PJ2T Club-owned Elecraft K3 radios rather than the venerable
and battle-tested K8ND K3. The Club now has four K3s, two of which are equipped
to allow them to be used for diversity receiving. We added a pair of INRAD
250-Hz 8-pole filters to the Club radio used to make it as familiar as
possible!

Diversity receiving has proven very valuable, and we never want to go back!
The contest starts and ends in daylight on Curacao. At PJ2T, we have only ~25
hours of useful operating time during the contest period. Unlike stations in
close proximity to population centers, we are too far from anywhere to allow
making daylight QSOs! When the evil solar disk rises above the horizon, it is
not long before absorption makes continued CQing or S&P a useless endeavor.
This is a serious disadvantage for us at 12 degrees latitude when compared to
competitors in more Northern locations. I see that TK0C has claimed to have
operated for ~40 hours, C6AGU for 36 hours, OK7K for 40 hours, etc.: the two
operators at PJ2T slept during daylight! N1MM says our ontime was officially
26:15.

We achieved four hours above 100 QSOs/per hour, another four hours of rate over
80 QSO/hour. Far less ‘letter mining’ this year compared to last year, with
full callsigns being copied more easily.

We ended the contest with a claimed score of 1,766,797 points: 1359 QSOs, 57
S&P, and 74 DX countries.

Radio: Elecraft K3
Amp: AL-1200
Antenna: Inv-L
RX Antennas: 
 1000’ Europe Beverage, 880’ USA/JA Beverage, DX Engineering 4-square, 80m
inv-V


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