[CQ-Contest] DE KP4/DL2CC WP3R story+photos

[Frank Grossmann [DL2CC]]

See a nice picture-enhanced-version under:
http://www.grossmann.com/ham/wp3r/wwdxcw98/wwdxcw98.html

Text only version follows...



Here are some random comments on the WP3R operation last weekend.

What a week. 
This is not a resort type thing. This is the tropical rainforest.
And the word "rainforest" implies one thing about the weather. It is raining
half the day.
WP3R is run out of generator power with no toilet, no shower. But it has a
nice hill next to the shack. The shack is actually a real shack, an
equipment shelter. I don't know how to call it - it's a small construction
site type of room. 
The hill is about 50m tall I guess and serves as platform for the one tower.
That tower was about to be equipped with an additional 2el 40m yagi which we
didn't manage to put up (it's still on the ground here). So we (me and Tim
N3RCJ) arrived on Sunday before the contest in order to get things up and
running. 
About things: Never believe a word Delta Airlines Cargo says. Never. They
promised three days from Germany to here. They haven't told me about this
holiday called Thanksgiving. And they haven't told me about the fact that
there are tons of Thanksgiving-mail on queue at the Atlanta hub waiting to
be shipped to Puerto Rico. And they haven't told me that this has priority
over private shipments.
We had to call them a zillion times trying to convince them to ship the
stuff down to Puerto Rico. Only after getting hold of a Puerto Rican who
worked for Delta cargo at the Atlanta airport who personally put the stuff
on the aircraft on wednesday they finally shipped it down here.
I thought of putting a message on the contest reflector with their phone
number and asking everybody on the reflector to call them up and tell them
to ship our stuff.
And of course nobody told me that U.S. customs in the airport cargo area is
closed for Thanksgiving from wednesday 4pm on.
However, there is also a good thing about PuertoRican bureaucracy. They're
quite flexible. So I could convince a customs officer at the passenger
customs office of the airport who was stationed in Berlin to sign my
shipping papers even though he never saw the cargo.

So you go to this tropical island a week early in order to put up some
antennas and then be finished on wednesday before the contest, get some rest
on the beach, look at the local girls and bacardi rum etc.... and get slowly
ready for the contest.
I even learned some Salsa dancing in order to feel like a local.

However. 
Putting up a high sophisticated s/o 2 radio station is not a too easy task.
So we worked day and night to get things up and running. Tim was on the
tower most of the time. We were up until 4 in the morning the days before
the contest. Every morning the neighbours roosters woke us up. They must
have known we wanted to get up real early in the morning. They actually
slept right next to our windows which don't have glass in them, just the
moskito net.
By the beginning of the contest nothing was hooked up. I had my station
ready but the nice WX0B 2x6 switchbox up the hill on the tower wasn't hooked
up. 
Saturday 00:45z was my first contact. Using a R7000 on 40m.
About 1 hour later the switchbox was hooked up to one radio so I could use
the newly put inverted V which was put up as a replacement for the to be put
up 40m yagi. At about 04z both radios were hooked up but the audio mixer
didn't really work. We were actually too stupid to fix this simple 2
potentiometer 2 switch thing. Maybe I should ask K1VR how to wire it up so
that it does what we want.

160m:
On sunday morning about 02z I took a break. I go: "Tim, when do you leave?".
He: "In about one hour". I: "I'll sleep in the car, wake me up when you
leave". Now he goes up the tower trying to fix the TIC ring rotator. Comes
back some nearly 4 hours later. Wakes me up. 06z. I say sh** - those 3 hours
were my european mults on 160 and 80 and another 300 QSOs missing. Now he is
not a contester really. So how should he know... and I forgot to tell him
that I didn't have an alarm clock with me. Nearly sunset in Europe. 160m,
looking desperatly for my european mults. "CQ DX EU WP3R". Stateside pileup.
"EU ONLY USA LATER DE WP3R CQ DX TEST". Stateside pileup. "USA QRX USA QRX
NW EU". Stateside pileup. 
Actually was able to work a couple of Europeans. Then - no kidding -
somebody from the U.S. calls me "ASS". Couple of you guys must have heard
that. Now what do you think I am doing at 06:20z on 160m. I can work
stateside at 09z! Europe I can't.
I was really mad. Left 160 for good.

10m: 
Who has an FT1000MP? Have you ever seen the very last red LED at S9+60 light
up on the S-Meter? 
Me - yes - once in my life. It was the well known Fred K3ZO on sunday evening.

6-band-contacts:
Congrats to the guys at K3LR. It took them not more than a 5 minutes anytime
I was new on a band to find me. RW2F was the first DX station to have 6
contacts with me. They came right before any other station behind K3LR, even
before any other U.S. station!

Beverage and Machete:
This goes hand in hand. You have to cut your way through the bush. Next year
we'll get some kind of chainsaw. The European beverage I put up doesn't work
at all. As there is no sight I had to go by compass all the way. And
probably that killed the performance. 

Rotators: 
Both rotators - the TIC ring and the Orion actually are broken. The TIC ring
mechanically (you have to climb up to turn it) - the Orion has no direction
display. I wish we would have known this beforehand. But then, who turns
antennas in sweepstakes.
So I had to do most of the contest with very limited turning of the antennas. 

With all those failures and tired OP etc. my CT gives me time on of 36.7
hours and time off of 10.9 hours. But I have no idea how that is calculated.
I guess the times when I was looking for mults are also in off times.

Thanks to Tim Rhoads N3RCJ who helped the whole week before the contest (he
worked like a horse) and to the local host Angel WP3R who got wet several
times climbing up the tower trying to fix the TIC ring. Thanks also to the
guys at TOP TEN DEVICES, WX0B, K3LR and especially WA3FET for trying to get
everything sent to the site on time and who helped making this possible.

However. I'll be back here. The island is just too beautiful. Back home we
have snow now. All of my equipment plus lots of fancy switching and
filtering is here now anyway.

See you all in the ARRL 10m contest during which I will have a nice chair,
good food, a nicely prepared station and a real bed.
--
Dipl.-Kaufm. Frank Grossmann frank at grossmann.com    DL2CC (ex DL1SBR)
Grossmann EDV-Beratung, Stuttgart     http://www.grossmann.com


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