Caribbean Tour 1998
By Ronald Stuy (PA3EWP)
Because we couldn’t resist, we visited the Caribbean again for the forth time. Former years we have been active from VP5, FG, J7, FM, J6 and 9Y4. This year we decided to air Jamaica (6Y) and Cayman Brac (ZF9) one of the remote Cayman Islands.
Peter PA3BBP couldn’t join us this year because he had to do his flying exam to become an aircraft pilot. We couldn’t find any replacement in time so we decided to go with 2 persons, Rob PA3ERC and Ronald PA3EWP. To avoid any problems at customs we pre-arranged all radio licenses and import permits in advance. The assigned calls were 6Y5/PA3ERC, 6Y5/PA3EWP, ZF2RC/ZF9 and ZF2WP/ZF9.
The objectives for this expedition were almost the same as last years:
To meet these objectives the following equipment was carried with the expedition team:
Here is our story
On 27th of August we left Holland at 11.30 local time heading for Montego Bay Jamaica via Cuba. After a little delay because of heavy thunderstorms we arrived at 18.00 local time in Jamaica.
Jamaica
It was already getting dark so we had to setup the station early in the morning. Like other years we have prepared our paperwork so customs let us through without any questions, while other had to unpack their cases. After a short inspection of the villa we had an early nap. Next morning we started at sunrise 04.30 local time to setup the antennas. By 10.00 o’clock local time he had 2 verticals up and running with a perfect SWR ready to start the Caribbean Tour. Since we took an Icom IC706MKII with us we also had 6 meter operational. We didn’t have the space to take a yagi with us so we hang a dipole in a 10 meter fiber mast. Because it was Friday and we wanted to be active whole weekend we had to get some "Red Stripes" (The local beer) to survive the weekend. At 18.00Z we were ready to start the tour. Unfortunately the propagation was not to good so we decided to stop after the European greyline with nearly 1.000 QSO’s in the log.
The next day we noticed that the propagation on 10 and 12 meter were excellent to North America. Rob gave away some multipliers in the SCC RTTY contest. During the day we had a power-cut for approx. 1 hour so we spent the time in the swimming pool with a nice cold "Stripe".
On Sunday 30th August we had a heavy thunderstorm just above the Island with a lot of wind, we had to stop the transmission and disconnect the antennas for an half hour to avoid damage to the equipment. Because of the high winds during the thunderstorm one of the guy anchor was pulled out of the ground, crashing one of the verticals. The vertical was bend a little but we managed to get it up again within an half hour.
We had hard time to work people on the low bands because of the QRN. We tried to setup a beverage to improve our reception on the low bands but unfortunately there was no space in the northern direction. The low band were not easy to work and propagation was very poor while 10 and 12 meters was wide open we decided to spent less time on the lower bands and concentrate us more on the higher bands.
Alex PA3DMH, our webmaster, called us every day to download the logs, dairy and the latest digital pictures of the tour. The telephone line quality in Jamaica is very bad so we had hard time to get the modems synchronized. Most of the time we heard a terrible echo on the line resulting in no connection at all. This was the reason that our web-site wasn’t updated every day.
Japanese amateurs must have been happy, for the first time in the Caribbean we had a good opening to Japan. Later during the day Ronald activated RTTY on the WARC bands for a few hours but there was nearly no response. The last day on Jamaica we did some strange things like switching to different bands/modes on request, RTTY on 10 meters, work some stations via the RS12 satellite. We tried several time 6 meters but have worked nil.
At 7th September at 02.30Z we disconnected the equipment after logging the last station (J69DS) on RTTY from Jamaica. We were satisfied with the result of 10.494 QSO’s that was far beyond our expectation. Early in the next morning we took down the antennas and prepared our selves for the next destination Cayman Brac.
Cayman Brac
To get on Cayman Brac to had to fly via Grand Cayman, the main island of the Cayman Islands. From there we had to fly with a little aircraft to Cayman Brac via Little Cayman which is about 110 miles away from Grand Cayman. The luggage weight could have been a problem but we where lucky, all equipment and antennas could go with the same flight. After a few hours of travelling we arrived at 16.00 local time on Cayman Brac.
We knew that sun would set at 19.00 local time giving us 3 hours to setup the antennas. Since the villa was located on the beach we decided to put the verticals as near as possible to the Caribbean Sea. We separated both verticals about 70 meters from each other to avoid interference. Just in time before it got dark the antennas were ready. We had a quick snack and started the second phase of the tour. We did it again, move from one island to the next within 24 hours.
The first night we soon had a couple of hundred stations in the log. It had been a long day we went early to bed. The next morning Rob was working a huge pile-up on 10 and 12 meters to Europe. We noticed that ZF is wanted in Europe much more than 6Y. As other years we experienced that 30 meters is always very busy the first days. Rob quits more than one time the pile-up on 30 meters because stations didn’t behave. During the European greyline Ronald worked 80 meter, despite the QRN signals were very loud so many stations made the log.
We decided to put a dipole for 40 meters on the fiber mast to improve our transmission. The base of the fiber mast was in the sea at flood and the dipole was hanging above the sea which worked excellent. We made also a little 70 meter long beverage to the North. The beverage didn’t function at all. We never found out why. Since we only had 2 operators we had to split the bands during the night, we couldn’t stay up forever . . . Rob was mainly concentrating on 30 and 40 meters while Ronald was taking care of 80 meters during the European greyline.
It was not our intention to enter the WAE contest because the lack of power and beams, despite we tried to find a clear frequency to give away some multipliers without success. Probably the QRM was to high in Europe so nobody heard us. Sunday morning Ronald was luckier, and worked a couple of hundred Europeans during the contest on 20 meters.
Also from Cayman Brac we worked a lot of Japanese stations on different bands. Our greyline was favorite for 30 and 40 meters while their greyline was good from 12 to 17 meters. Some JA’s worked us on 5 times on different band and/of modes. It was a pleasure to work a Japanese pile-up.
Every afternoon 10 and 12 meters were wide open to North America. Sometimes it was possible to work over 200 QSO’s an hour if not everybody as asking for our name, QTH etc. Some people made statements that it was not permitted to run a contest on 12 meters, or that we worked to fast, or we should give our name, QTH, name of the dog, credit card number etc. every QSO. Who can help these guys . . .
On Cayman Brac we had the same problem with the modem connection. In total we only had 3 successful file transfers. Unfortunately Alex had to go abroad for his QRL so we couldn’t update the web-site for a couple of days. When he was back again we never succeeded to send over the logs.
Because there was a lot of Top band demand we changed the 40 meter dipole into a 160 meter dipole. We worked only 11 stations from North America, the QRN was terrible so after 2 nights of we changed it back again for 40 meter.
We received a lot of European 40 meters SSB request from Europe. Rob worked about 75 stations at the end of the European greyline. Next morning Ronald worked another 300 European stations on 40 meter SSB, the propagation was excellent. We also listened up for USA but almost nobody replied.
Saturday 18th September at 21.00Z we logged the last station in this year tour. QSO number 14.137 was logged. We had still 2 hours of daylight to take down the antennas. We enjoyed satisfied our last nice sunset on Cayman Brac with a cold beer. After dinner we packed our equipment and were ready for departure, we went early to bed.
Next day we will be a day of traveling. To get home we had to fly from Cayman Brac to Grand Cayman, from Grand Cayman to Jamaica and from Jamaica to Amsterdam. This trip took 33 hours included an 8 hour’s delay on Jamaica which we spent in the Jamaican Holiday Inn drinking Stripes.
In total we logged 24.631 QSO’s during our Caribbean Tour 1998. We made more contacts then last year with 3 operators and a station around the clock. It was great to work more than 1.100 Japanese stations. In general everybody behaved correctly, we wished more stations knew our name, QSL information and name of Robs dog. We also noticed that especially southern European counties always call with the last 2 letters of their call. This slows down the pile-up extensive, full call signs will be much better.
Next year we like to extend the expedition team with more (international) operators so we can take more hardware and get more sleep.
For more information, statistics and pictures visit our web-site:
http://www.muurkrant.com/pi4com/index.html
See you next year from . . .
Rob PA3ERC and Ronald PA3EWP.