[CQ-Contest] PJ2T 3830 Comments - Really!

[Geoff Howard]

Dang, I had forgotten that this doggoned server 
rejects all attachments. Here's the 3830 text.

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It’s called the WORLDWIDE contest for good 
reason, and this year PJ2T had a truly worldwide team. Check out our team list:

Kei, JJ1RJR, lives and works in Jakarta, 
Indonesia, and traveled AROUND THE WORLD to 
Curacao in order to spend 3.5 days at PJ2T. He 
made that monster trip from Jakarta, to Kuala 
Lumpur, then Amsterdam, then Aruba, and finally 
Curacao, and then back, solely to operate with 
us. This was not a work related trip – it was 
just for the contest! In our long PJ2T history 
nobody has come farther, although RW0CN comes 
close. Kei spent four days traveling in order to 
spend three days operating in Curacao.

Uli, DL8OBQ, is a many years CCC/PJ2T member from 
Rinteln, Germany, and served as our operating leader.

Heiko, DK3DM, also has many contests at PJ2T 
under his belt and made the journey from Warstein, Germany.

Ton, PA1CC, came to Curacao on KLM from his home 
in Tilburg, Netherlands and has also been at PJ2T multiple times before.

Tom, VE3CX, lives in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Check 
that out on the map. That’s a lonnnnng way from 
Toronto and other major hubs, yet he made the 
trip a second time to be part of PJ2T.

I (Geoff, W0CG) live in Coeur d Alene, Idaho. 
That’s so darned remote that it takes me more 
total clock time (34 hours) and more flight 
segments (four and sometimes five) to get to 
Curacao than our friends from Europe.

Rich, W3ACO, joined our team for the second time, 
traveling from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. That sounds 
like it should be easy, but he was delayed out of 
CID by American Eagle and had to spend an unplanned night in Miami.

Pete, K8PGJ, came to the island from Detroit, his 
first trip to PJ2T, taking a chance on a place he 
had never been and a bunch of guys he had never 
met. He fitted in instantly and was a huge asset to the team.

Ray, NM2O, traveled from Albany, New York.

And finally there is long time CCC/PJ2T member 
Jack, N4RV, traveling from Washington Dulles who 
has been operating from the Coral Cliff 
neighborhood of Curacao for some half a century, 
earning multiple World  #1 single op titles from 
that neighborhood. Jack and Gwyn in fact spent 
their honeymoon in the famous PJ9JT, now PJ2T 
house. His long experience was of priceless value to the team.

So in the best spirit of the contest our CQ 
Worldwide team really was worldwide. In the space 
of a few hours on Tuesday before the contest we 
met Uli’s KLM 747 at the airport, Heiko’s Air 
Berlin flight from Dusseldorf, Ton’s slightly 
later KLM flight from Amsterdam, and multiple 
American Airlines flights from the States. Kei 
arrived Thursday on Tui Airlines from Amsterdam 
via Aruba. Just add up the miles they traveled 
collectively to be able to sit down at our desk 
on Friday night and start giving out the five 
nine nines that you heard all weekend.

All of us in this sport are fascinated that it’s 
a different contest every time. The solar 
forecasts were for active to disturbed 
conditions. The forecasts were correct. We noted 
suppressed conditions on many bands. Polar paths 
suffered the most. In years with peak sunspots, 
conditions are so good that everyone works 
everyone, and in those conditions the contest is 
usually dominated by the Zone 33 teams who are 
very close to Europe and thus are able to benefit 
from huge availability of many nearby mults on 
the low bands, while at the same time being able 
to run North America like crazy. In years at the 
bottom of the cycle it sometimes seems like 
nobody is working anything and we all ask 
ourselves why we’re not home watching football. 
But in the in between years like this year, we 
benefit in the Caribbean. Zone 33 is able to 
still rack up tons of mults, particularly on the 
low bands, but have some problems working North 
America, especially on 10. When the States is not 
able to run Europe vigorously, attention turns to 
the Caribbean, and we benefit as you can see from 
our QSO counts. Also, we have the benefit of the 
north-south path and thus 10 sounds great to us 
when it seems nearly dead for east-west paths. So 
in conditions like this year our ability to make 
very large numbers of QSOs into North America 
makes up and then some for Zone 33’s ability to 
harvest lots of low band mults. How that all 
balances out awaits final corrected scores, but 
one has to admit that the changing landscape of 
the contest, year by year, is endlessly fascinating.

PJ2T is now beginning our 17th continuous year of 
contesting from the former PJ9JT / W1BIH John 
Thompson QTH. We have only missed one major 
contest in all that time, that one because of a 
last minute medical problem. Doing so requires 
major support of all kinds from our dedicated CCC 
club members, and I am happy to be able to thank 
all of them here publicly for all those years of 
effort. The composition of our membership has 
changed over all that time, understandably, as 
life situations change, but our accomplishments 
in this contest and in this contest season are a 
result of the accumulated support of all those 
people over a long period of years. I thank and salute them all.

For this specific CQWW SSB 2016 effort, a special 
thanks to Uli, DL8OBQ, a highly accomplished 
operator and leader, who coached the team, led 
the on-air strategy, crafted the operating 
schedule, went all weekend with nearly zero 
sleep, and kept us all on our game. Thanks also 
to veteran Jack, N4RV, for his inputs from a half 
century of Curacao experience before and during 
the operation, for his incredible pileup ears, 
and for keeping everyone laughing. I also thank 
Heiko, DK3DM (“The Loudspeaker”) for his 
tirelessness and stamina on the air, Ray, NM2O, 
for unparalleled analytical analyses, Kei, JJ1RJR 
for his long travel, great operating skills, and 
spoken Japanese during those JA runs. Ton, PA1CC, 
is an incredibly friendly and articulate 
gentleman and a whisper-quiet operator, and you 
would almost not even notice he is sitting there 
except that the rate meter at times glows red 
when he’s operating. Rich, W3ACO, doubled as our 
incredible chef for the week and also did a 
masterful job on the air, patiently carrying runs 
and chasing mults, and Pete, K8PGJ, adapted to 
the station immediately and distinguished himself 
by being willing to do ANYTHING at any time for 
anyone that could help the team on the air, my 
work, trips to the airport, antenna work at a 
local, slogging in the hot sticker bushes and 
cactus, or anything else that needed to be done. 
Tom, VE3CX is a seasoned, highly experienced 
contester and he was a huge asset to the on-air 
team and we were very lucky to have his presence, 
and he also made an embarrassingly large 
unsolicited cash contribution after he got home to help keep PJ2T on the air.

Finally, I again thank our member Rick, N0YY, who 
with W0AWL and W0GXA in Iowa built our beautiful 
new operating consoles and much of the new 
antenna switching system, and Mal, NP2L, who has, 
without ever having been asked, contributed very 
significant amounts of cash over a period of many 
years to the PJ2T effort. We are also indebted to 
Tom, W8TK, for enormous donations of equipment in 
our early years and to Yaesu for helping us to 
obtain two FT-2000s on attractive terms. These, 
together with many other contributions and 
efforts too numerous to mention individually, 
have kept us going and have resulted in the 
fairly recent addition of our 4O3A triplexer 
system, a high power antenna switch from W9NJY, 
the new operating desks, and the pushbutton 
antenna switching system that have greatly 
improved our on air operability, and it all shows in this year’s score.

Also always in our thoughts are our departed 
members Noel, W9EFL (SK), Joe, W9JUV (SK), our QSL Manager Scott, N9AG (SK).

For 48 magic hours all of us around the world in 
the contest are part of a fellowship of friends 
bound by passion and shared interest, respect, 
and admiration. Nothing in the world could have 
made me more proud or feel more privileged than 
to stand at PJ2T’s kitchen sink with my arms 
crossed and a broad smile and watch this great 
group of friends in our shack engaged with all of 
you in this wonderful worldwide family.

QSLs via W3HNK and LotW. See you on the CW weekend.

59 9 from Curacao, and thanks!

       - Geoff, W0CG, PJ2DX, Coeur d Alene, Idaho