[SCCC] FW: CQWW CW 8Q7ZO M/M HP

Sun Dec 6 02:11:11 EST 2020

Hi Marko,

Great score for a quick expedition, congratulations to both of you. It was
nice to hear another big Zone 22 signal wherever I turned on the bands! I
operated only 40-10m with a minimalist station - 300w to a Hexbeam and a
40m vertical in the city nowhere near the coast.

http://lists.contesting.com/archives//html/3830/2020-12/msg00087.html

73 de Prasad VU2PTT, W2PTT (ex-AF6DV)

ARSI, ARRL, FOC, CWOPS, IFROAR, MARC
NCDXF, INDEXA, SCCC, VUCC
ARRL DXCC Checkpoint
CQ Awards Checkpoint
Coordinator - VU Contest Group www.vucg.in
Webmaster - Logger32 www.logger32.net

On Thu, Dec 3, 2020 at 2:29 AM <marko.n5zo at gmail.com> wrote:

> 73 from Dubai airport, 11 hr transit here.  But bar is open 24 hrs.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: webform at b4h.net <webform at b4h.net>
> Sent: Wednesday, December 02, 2020 12:49 PM
> To: 3830 at contesting.com; marko.n5zo at gmail.com
> Subject: CQWW CW 8Q7ZO M/M HP
>
>                     CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW - 2020
>
> Call: 8Q7ZO
> Operator(s): N5ZO W6NV
> Station: 8Q7ZO
>
> Class: M/M HP
> QTH: Maldives
> Operating Time (hrs): 48
>
> Summary:
>  Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
> ------------------------------
>   160:  125    13       35
>    80:  352    26       64
>    40: 1403    32       98
>    20: 1224    31       97
>    15: 1896    30      101
>    10: 1015    24       84
> ------------------------------
> Total: 6015   156      479  Total Score = 10,049,510
>
> Club: Southern California Contest Club
>
> Comments:
>
> I had some plans to travel to zone 20 for this year’s WW CW contest, but
> due to pandemic those plans started to fall apart around SSB contest time.
> The only country in a new zone, I had not operated from in a CQ WW contest
> and where travel would be possible without the complications of a 14-day
> quarantine was the Maldives in zone 22.
>
> The Maldives required a Covid-19 test before travelling and tourists were
> only confined to their destination resort island.  The Maldives is quite
> thorough in their COVID protection procedures and remains quite free of
> COVID infections.
>
> A quick skype call to Igor UA9CDC, who I knew from Zone 17 operations, set
> plans into motion to operate from Sun Island Resort, the home of many
> operations of 8Q7DV by the Russian teams.  Although they had not been there
> for 4 years Igor had good information for operations on short notice.
>
> I quickly scrapped single op plans as setting everything a multi-band
> station up myself, without help, would require two guys to establish a
> competitive station on an unfamiliar island. I contacted trusted old
> warhorse Oliver W6NV who was immediately committed after his wife Ann said
> something like “have fun” and so from then on we planned to be multi-op to
> simplify the station design and provide unlimited flexibility and fun. A
> two-man MM was envisaged from the beginning and seemed limited only by
> antenna and station building activities.
> Licensing to Maldives was very easy and licensing authority answered
> overnight to my inquiry.
>
> After travelling about 30 hours constrained with COVID trimmings, we
> arrived by speedboat on Sun Island Resort, Sunday before the contest.  Big
> surprise, we expected the water to be about 10 meters from our bungalow
> door, however, the shore was now something like 100 meters away.
> Apparently sometime during last 4 years there had been major land
> reclamation project.  A wide beach in front of the best bungalow for ham
> radio in NW corner of the island. There were tourists
> walking and wading the shoreline and many reclining chairs on the beach.
>  We
> quickly decided that due to shortage of coax and abundance of sunbathers,
> we would set our antennas close to the rooms, not the ideal ocean front
> situation
> enjoyed by the 8Q7DV Team.
>
> It took us about 3 days to set up our antenna farm which was mix of some
> gear stored by the 8Q7DV Team and VDAs and 5/8 wave 10 meter vertical
> carried in Oliver’s ski bag.  The antennas consisted of a 160/80 meter
> combination inverted L, 40 meter center fed half wave, 20 and 15 meter VDAs
> and the 10 meter
> 5/8 wave.  The coax feed to the 160/80 antenna with a common feed point
> was over
> 300 feet. The VDAs were pointed North and provided wide coverage primarily
> to EU and the US.  The systems worked out quite well, with only one mishap
> on Thursday before the contest when the 20 meter VDA blew down in a
> rainstorm over night.  A Spiderbeam pole section was broken, but the
> problem was nothing two engineers could not overcome with parts for a
> splint and good old duct tape.
>
> We had 2 complete stations with 2x K3 radios and SPE 1.3k amplifier and
> Juma
> PA1000 amplifier, low power band pass filters etc.  We both had to pay for
> one extra luggage each way to have everything we needed for this operation,
> and Russian coax, wire, rope, 3 Spiderbeam poles and other miscellaneous
> stuff we were able to use was essential for the operation.  We had good
> internet connection in the room, but had some problems with our
> computer-ran hotspot networking crashing every now and then, probably
> because RF got into modem cables in the room or something, it seemed to be
> worse during nighttime when we were on low bands.
>
> The highlight was achieving about 6000 contacts and 10-million points, we
> forecasted.  Of course, a 3rd or even 4th station with couple more
> operators could have produced another 2000 contacts and made operation
> somewhat more competitive in the MM category. There was always something
> going on at least on
> 3 bands.  Openings to US and especially US West Coast were weak and
> short.  QSB and multipath echo was heavy in most bands.  Despite making a
> special effort to work 160 meters, conditions limited the total QSO count
> to approximately 300 before and during the contest.
>
> The low light curse are today’s constant callers who listen little and are
> often strong signals.  These operators know well how to click spots and act
> like they are using code readers.  It is difficult to put anyone in the log
> when many callers are on the spot frequency and just pushing the F4 key and
> being zero beat with dozens or often hundreds of other callers does not
> work.  Split operation made things somewhat easier to handle.  I personally
> definitely was in zombieland on Sunday evening and at times  had difficult
> time on radio to understand what I was actually doing, it got better
> towards end of it again when I got out of funk.  Oliver took short nap on
> Sunday before high bands opened to Europe, which was probably smarter than
> trying to operate whole thing.  We both drove bicycle for half mile to
> restaurant for dinner on each day, for other food we stole crackers, eggs
> and cheese from breakfast buffet during the week to stock up.
>
> The contest ended 5 am local time on Monday.  After a five hour rest we
> went to lunch at the buffet and began to take the antennas down.  By
> Tuesday noon the antennas were disassembled and properly packed.  We
> finally had the opportunity to take a dip in pool and in Indian Ocean (only
> time during whole trip) by sunset on Tuesday.  We left Wednesday and now
> writing the 3830 post in the Dubai airport.
>
> Special thanks to Igor, UA9CDC, for the friendship, all advice and loan of
> stored gear that made this operation possible.
>
> This was my 31st CQ zone to operate CQ WW DX contest from.  I’m happy that
> despite pandemic I was able to put perhaps the hardest ones from my missing
> zone list on air this year.
>
> Tnx for Qs; it appears that Cycle-25 is off to a good start.  We both
> expect to see you next year from someplace  interesting !
>
> 73 de Marko N5ZO
>
>
> Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
>
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