Hi all – Looking forward to CQWW.  I don’t have any old-timer stories to tell; although, this year I am officially old.  My first CQWW was in 1996 or 1997 when the bands were like they are now; bottom of the cycle.  I was always interested in contesting but finding no contesters in Savannah, I went looking and found SECC.  There, John, K4BAI, and many others encouraged me and I was later invited to join NQ4I for CQWW in 2001.  Now you have to realize, that until I parked at Rick’s old QTH, I had never seen a tower over 50 feet!  It was a real experience… Rick took me in, found me a place at the 40m multiplier station and hoped that I would stay out of trouble.  We had two choices for antennas on the mult station, a dipole and a 40m yagi laying on the bucket of a cherry picker at about 40 feet pointed more or less at Europe.  At first, all I heard was noise, but after a bit, I could start to make some sense out of the band.  The only thing I had going for me was that since I had only been a low power op with wire antennas, I was experienced at search and pounce.

Now after several trips to NQ4I (including the three top teams for CQ WPX), I am ready to for my first CQWW as a single op (assisted) from my new station in Savannah.  It will eventually be a full SO2R station; however, the interfacing and filtering will not be complete until later this year or early next.  Currently the setup includes a FT1000D and a FT1000mp Field with a QRO 2500DX amp as the run amp, the antennas are a TH6DXX at 72 feet (rotatable) and a Cushcraft A3S fixed on Europe at approximately 40 feet.  The 2 tribanders can run as a stack into Europe and I have the dual feed option from Stackmatch so that the fixed antenna can be fed by radio A and the other by radio B for SO2R.  The tower is a motorized US Tower that allows all to nest down to 25 feet for hurricane season.  40 meter and 80 meter dipoles round out the farm.  Nothing yet for 160.  This year I will use only the TH6 and the wires for CQWW, but plan to have the full setup operational for ARRLDX.  Also plan to add a Yaesu Quadra to the Field for more SO2R power.  All this will hopefully provide many hours of fun and some “Savannah” points for SECC.