CQ Worldwide DX Contest, SSB
Call: P40A
Operator(s): KK9A
Station: P40A
Class: SOAB LP
QTH: Aruba
Operating Time (hrs): 45
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
------------------------------
160: 50 6 14
80: 230 14 46
40: 836 27 81
20: 1978 31 107
15: 1884 29 99
10: 540 16 30
------------------------------
Total: 5518 123 377 Total Score = 8,143,500
Club:
Comments:
Six years ago I operated my first CQ WW Phone contest from Aruba. I stayed at a
rental home and operated field day style using a small tribander at 30 ft. A
year later I purchase a home, which I named Iguana Villa, and I started
building a more serious contest station. I did the best that I could from a
small residential lot near the hotel area. During this trip, with the help of
WD9DZV / P40D, I finished installing a second tower for the 10m and 15m beams.
When I purchased this home, I never imaged having so much aluminum in the air.
All of the antennas, except for the 40m OptiBeam are homebrew and built very
heavy duty. Being close to the sea seems to offer some signal enhancement and
also plenty of corrosion problems. I also changed the guy wires this trip
since the four year old ones were looking pretty rusted. A current picture with
antenna descriptions is on http://www.qrz.com/p40a. The contest starts at 8:00pm
local time in Aruba and coincidently 20m nearly closes at the same time making
for a slow start and forcing me to the low bands sooner than I like. 40m was
in excellent shape all night and I had an unbelievable Japan run on for an hour
starting at 0830z. 80m and 160m were good, but a little noisy. When the sun
came up in the morning I ran Europe on 20m and 15m. I did not experience a
great 15m European opening and after 18 hours in the chair I was disappointed
with my QSO total. Finally 15m opened to the US and I had some nice rates in
the upper 200s and one 303 hour. I had my second radio on 10m listening for any
openings and that band opened during my good 15m opening. Since I was finally
logging a lot of contacts I hesitated in changing bands and unfortunately
missed some of this rare 10m opening. After the 10m and 15m runs, 20m became
hot to the U.S. and Japan and at the halfway point my QSO total was looking
pretty good. The second day was a basically a repeat, 80m and 160m were even
noisier so I took a three hour break and had dinner and a nap. Since I
struggled at times to make a lot of QSOs, I spent less time hunting for
multipliers that I should have and I missed a lot of easy ones. Conditions
were better than predicted and this was definitely another fun CQWW contest.
It was also great to see W2GD / P40W and AE6Y / P49Y again. Thanks for all of
the QSOs, especially the 14 who worked me on all six bands and the 52 who
worked me on five bands. Please QSL via WD9DZV.
73,
John
p40a@iguanavilla.com
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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