[3830] WPX SSB PJ2T M/M HP

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                    CQWW WPX Contest, SSB - 2022

Call: PJ2T
Operator(s): W0CG K4UEE W4ATL K4WK W5MJ KG5U WX4W W5GAI N7VWH WX5U
Station: PJ2T

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

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
  160:    7
   80:  502
   40: 1438
   20: 1978
   15: 2004
   10: 1860
------------
Total: 7789  Prefixes = 1319  Total Score = 37,613,923

Club: CCC

Comments:

It was a delight to welcome living legend DXpeditioner Bob Allphin, K4UEE, to
PJ2T this week. Bob is mentoring and growing contest operators, and to that end
he put together a group of nine delightful people to come to Curacao this week
and experience contesting from the DX side. Their contesting and DXexpedition
experience ranged from quite high to nearly zero, including one operator who had
never even used an amplifier. All of them had the excellent positive attitudes
that one looks for in good learners, and we managed to have a lot of fun, make a
lot of contacts, and, most important, make new friends. Not all of the ops had
met before, so at times it seemed like Dayton/South America, having a blast
meeting each other and talking radio as if we were at a hot dog cafeteria table
in the old Hara Arena. What fun.

Murphy got us this weekend with a commercial power outage and some cockpit
errors. Commercial power dropped without warning Saturday at 1557Z, right in the
middle of the highest rates of the weekend. In 20 minutes we had all four
stations and computers back up on the generator. We ran for about three and a
half hours without the amplifiers, during which time rates dropped by about
half, and it was not possible to hold a run frequency except on 10 meters. This
was our first power drop during a major contest in many, many years. When the
power came back up, so did the rates, but we lost out on about 500 QSOs. The
cockpit errors also cost us contacts but the crew had fun, learned a lot, and
everyone is now more excited and more experienced about contesting. This is good
for PJ2T and for the contest community at large. 

None of our CCC members were able to come to WPX SSB this year, so we are
grateful to this crew for filling in: Bob (K4UEE, Marietta, GA); Wayne (K4WK,
Decatur, GA); Sherman (W4ATL, Atlanta, GA); Madison (W5MJ, Cedar Park, TX); Dawn
(N7VWH, Bellevue, WA); Dale (KG5U, Houston, TX); Skip (W5GAI, Carriere, MS);
Curtis (WX4W, Crestwood, KY); David (W5XU, Covington, LA). Of that group, WX4W,
W5GAI, and W5XU have decided to join the CCC club as full members. We’re
excited and grateful that they liked what they saw here and are interested in
long term participation and support. Thanks again to K4UEE for making this
contest weekend a reality.

Curacao has dropped all COVID entrance testing requirements, simplifying travel
immensely. The COVID challenges have now been replaced by gigantic challenges to
Signal Point as a $150 million dollar resort hotel construction project has
begun immediately adjacent to our site. In the past two months we have had to
work through infrastructure changes to power and phone/DSL service and massive
dirt work that will relocate the access road to our community. Both of our
Beverage antennas and long feedlines are lost to the construction, but we have
successfully relocated them to safe ground. W0CG worked on Monday with W4ATL and
K4WK to move hundreds of feet of 7/8 inch hardline out of the line of fire of
the dozers. That was a success, and we can breathe easier now. Geoff has been
literally working side by side with the utility crews and heavy equipment
operators to minimize property damage, limit loss of station resources including
buried cable runs, and keep the power, water, and data turned on as well as
possible. Last week we worked like wild dogs with shovels and picks to install
265 feet of 75 mm buried conduit to provide a route for new data cables from the
road to the PJ2T house. For 51 years this QTH has been very isolated and has
enjoyed a quiet abandoned scrubby forest next door, but those days are at an
end. Ultimately we will be better off here in the Coral Cliff neighborhood, but
right now property defense is a monster unwelcome chore. 

Thanks for the QSOs this season. We’re proud that we overcame the COVID and
construction challenges, and beginning last October made good showings in both
modes of CQWW and ARRL, in CQ 160 CW, and now in WPX SSB. None of this would be
possible without the support of our CCC membership. 

WI9WI will solo PJ2T for WPX CW. 

Finally, I can say “See you at Dayton” with confidence.

-	73, Geoff, W0CG / PJ2DX, for the PJ2T gang


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