PJ2T 2001

I really love traveling and when Marty (NW0L) decided to join the Caribbean Contest Consortium he was looking for a someone to take that initial trip down to the island of Curacao with him. I was available, and ready to take my first pseudo DXPedition. At that time, the PJ2T contest station was in its initial stages of development. The house was clean and the equipment was decent but nothing like it is now. We chose to travel down in September and participate in the WAE SSB contest. We knew little about the contest and even less about propagation from Curacao. We stumbled through it and took second place in South America and about 10th in the world. It was a good experience but I wish I would have spent more time on the air. We traveled into town several times for club purposes and, not being that efficient in "island life" (everything goes slower). The temperature was 90 plus degrees and these little biting bugs loved Marty's legs (they didn't seem to bother me too much). We had 6 fans going simultaneously to get some circulation but we just recycled the heat. The salt air clinged to our sweaty bodies and we just endured it. The air cooled in the evenings and we enjoyed the breeze off the ocean. I spent some time sleeping on the porch and feeding the iguanas grapes. Our radio experience was awesome. The pileups were huge and learning to work stations in the cluster was a good experience for improving our contesting skills.