cq ww ssb rhodes 2002

This is the story of how a late break holiday in the sun turned into a mini dx-pedition for the 2002 CQ WW SSB contest . It started on 16th September with my wife persuading me we should take a holiday ! A quick trip onto the internet and a small selection of available locations came up with Rhodes departing on 23rd October for one week, after checking the weather forecast , the holiday was booked and we celebrated with a drink contemplating what lay ahead..............then all of a sudden it dawned on me, last weekend in October? big contest on then I think, checking the web again I confirmed it was the CQWW SSB, so good chance for me to take my much travelled portable equipment and give away a few points and SV5 as a multiplier ............how do I tell the wife !!!

A few hours later, I'm back on the web (what did we do without it ), checking out the contest rules, previous years results, likely propogation and amateur activity from Rhodes. A search for SV5 and I find the web site of the Decadonese Amateur Radio Society and a list of members and their web sites, a little surfing later I come across Mike's (SV5BYR) web page and spot a banner advertising free use of the club shack for visiting amateurs, can this be true ? where is it, what equipment is available, a million questions come to mind. Finding Mike's e-mail address a rather garbled message is sent requesting further information and off I go to bed dreaming of contest pile ups and lot of dx.........and how can I explain this one to the XYL..............well.........

Several e-mails later over the next 4 weeks and a slow but constant acceptance by my wife that even a hoiday with a contest in the middle of it was better than no holiday at all ( !!) and things were set, there were wire aerials for most bands, a three element tribander, two radios, PC with dx-cluster access and a ready made shack available to me for the whole weekend, I cannot thank Mike and the local radio hams enough for the encouragement and support I got from them both before, during and after the contest.

Our accomodation in Rhodes was in the holiday village of Pefkos, some 50km from Rhodes, we opted to take the transfer to find our feet, we arrived at the hotel on the evening of Wednesday 23rd October, got some food and some rest. Thursday morning after some hard work explaining to the hotel manager about amateur radio (thanks to the staff at the Thalia Hotel for helping) I was allowed to erect my DX antenna on the hotel roof, a wire dipole for 10m and the Icom 706 and switch mode psu which has seen extensive holiday use.

Thursday afternoon involved some hurried negotiations for a hire car and a drive into Rhodes to hook up with Mike. After a game of hide and seek around the outskirts of the town , we finally meet up and we follow Mike to the shack to check things out. I had prewired the CQ caller various switching and control boxes and was keen to make sure it all work and inspect the antenna sytems to see if any pre contest work was needed on the Friday.

The Radio Club station is located in 'the Mayors' garden' , a nursery for all the plants and shrubs that decorate the town. The land was given to the club as recognition of their help in establishing emergency communications in the tremendous fires on the island in the 1980s . The shack and antennas were built and installed by the local amateurs .

The gardens cover around 1 acre with plenty of room for antennas, they seem to have once been the formal gardens of an old house in the grounds and provided a very peaceful and interesting place for my wife to explore and photograph whilst I was locked away in the shack.