CQ Worldwide DX Contest, RTTY
Call: V31WI
Operator(s): WI9WI
Station: V31WI
Class: SOAB LP
QTH: Placencia, Belize
Operating Time (hrs): 17
Summary:
Band QSOs State/Prov DX Zones
------------------------------------
80: 0 0 0 0
40: 21 9 9 5
20: 241 43 42 15
15: 303 42 39 14
10: 102 23 16 12
------------------------------------
Total: 668 117 106 46 Total Score = 421,254
Club: Minnesota Wireless Assn
Comments:
Our daughter Cristin, who is a wildlife biologist has been working near Punta
Gorda on the southern coast of Belize since April. We decided it would be a
good time to visit her in the early fall. There were three main objectives to
the trip. One, visit with Cristin. Two, have some family time. Our older
daughter also came along. We wanted to do some SCUBA, snorkeling, see some
Mayan ruins, see some wildlife, swim, eat out and have an all around good time.
Third was to do some ham radio on a low key basis. Strangely, the week we chose
just happened to wrap around a major contest, the CQWW RTTY contest. I'm not
quite sure how that happened. With the help of Ted, K9IMM, and Bob, NG9L, I got
pointed to the right connections in Belize to obtain a license and equipment
importation permit. After a few e-mails, and sending in an application and a
small fee by mail, in about 8 weeks I had my license as V31WI and my
importation permit. Cristin said not to rent a house near Punta Gorda, she
didn't think anything appropriate would be available there, so we rented a 3
story house on the beach near Placencia, a more touristy area 2 1/2 hours north
of Punta Gorda. This proved to be a good choice. We left the house in Madison at
4 AM on Tuesday 24 Sept, and after flying from Madison to Atlanta to Belize City
were at the rental house only 12 1/2 hours later including the 3 hour drive from
the airport to Placencia. The main roads are all well paved and in good
condition with the exception of a few potholes. There is little traffic. We
were pretty tired, so while I took a short nap, my wife Annette, KA9DOC, went
to explore a bit and find a grocery store. We then went out to dinner. After
dinner I set up the radio on the 3rd floor porch, set up a BuddiStick and made
a few QSOs on 40 meters. Then to bed. Then next day I put up a homemade
off-center fed dipole hanging from a post on the 3rd floor porch in inverted V
fashion with the feed about 30 feet above ground. The paths to Europe, NA and
JA were unobstructed from there. The OFC dipole loads well without any tuner on
40, 20, 10 and 6 meters, and will work with a tuner on all the other HF bands
except 80 and 160. Needless to say this antenna worked a lot better than the
BuddiStick. I also quickly discovered that if I ran more than 80 watts the
radio power supply would shut down. I never did figure out why. It didn't seem
to be overheating. My goal was to make 1000 QSOs, about half each both inside
and outside the contest. In the next 2 days, operating 2 or 3 hours a day I
made about 280 QSOs, mainly just testing the bands out. All the bands were
good, but 30 and 40 meters were very noisy from constant thunderstorms to the
south towards Guatemala and Hondouras. The best bands seemed to be 12 and 15
meters. Thursday we drove to Punta Gorda, visited some ruins and a chocolate
factory, which is really a house, and picked up Cristin. Friday I took it easy,
making a few CW and JT-65 QSOs, and about 10 RTTY QSOs testing out the
equipment. Everything worked OK. When the contest started I got on 15. It took
30 minutes to make one QSO. Something was obviously wrong, and it took almost
an hour to discover there was a problem with the antenna tuner. That was
quickly rectified and I then got a much better rate going on 15 and then 20.
After a couple of hours I went to 40. The noise level was horrendous, S-9.
After an hour of CQing on various frequencies, and doing a lot of fruitless
calling in S&P mode I hadn't made a single QSO. So I quit and popped a
Belikin and sat on the porch and watched the lightning. Both of the next 2 days
my wife and daughters went diving, so I had the full day each day for the
contest. Things started slowly in the morning and picked up after noon or so.
Ten meters was a disappointment there. It was wide open but there seemed a
paucity of stations to work. I'd call CQ, work 20 or so stations in a few
minutes and then it would just dry up. It was wide open to the US most of the
afternoon. I had put up another OCF dipole Friday morning, this one cut for
30/15 meters, so I had antennas for 40 through 10 I could use if the tuner
failed. This wasn't the best setup, but worked well for what it was, running 50
watts to low dipoles. The major issue I had was that I had brought my IC-7000
instead of my K-3. This was probably a mistake. The ICOM is smaller and travels
a bit better, but isn't exactly a contest radio. Using AFSK I was forced to run
in LSB mode with wide open LSB filters. There is no way to narrow the passband
much, so if there are strong signals nearby the receiver is desensed and the
AGC is activated. There were a lot of weak stations calling me that I just
couldn't work. Sorry. If I found a good frequency to run on I would run split
(on the same frequency) with the receive VFO in RTTY mode and using the 400 Hz
or 250 Hz RTTY filter. This worked a lot better, but I had to offset the VFOs
by 2.1 KHz since the readout in RTTY mode is the mark frequency, which worked
OK in run mode, but was very cumbersome in S&P mode, so I just didn't do
it. All told I was quite satisfied with the operation. With probably about 8 or
so more hours of operating I'm sure I could have reached 1000 QSOs in the
contest. I did make my objective of 1000 QSOs for the trip. Thanks to everyone
for the contacts. One of my goals was to make the V31 and zone 7 multiplier
available to everyone who wanted it. If you want a QSL, I will upload to LotW
as soon as I get my certificate. I will have cards printed and reply quickly to
direct requests. I will answer bureau cards, but the wait will be on the long
side.
73
Jim V31WI, WI9WI
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