Left axis is number of contacts per hour
Bottom axis is time from 21:00 UTC (5pm AST) to 02:00 UTC (10pm AST)
Colors indicate frequency band (10, 15, 20, and 40 meters)
After the CW Sweepstakes in 1999, someone on the 3830 internet reflector asked why nobody went to the Virgin Islands? Only KP2D was on that weekend, and the pileup on Sunday was over 5 kHz wide. I thought to myself, why didn't I go there? So I found the info on Windwood and WP2Z on the internet and suggested to my wife, Karen, that maybe it would be fun to go there for a week, and I could play radio while she enjoyed the tropics. I thought it would be a tough sell, but after looking at the pictures and reading about the place (including comments from other wives who had been there), she was as excited about the idea as I was. So I finally called the owner, and learned that the house was available for the weekend I wanted.
I spent most of the late summer and fall planning for the trip. The FT-1000MP was no longer operational, and the status of the backup Icom 751A was unknown, so I would have to take a radio. The computer at Windwood was also fried, so I needed to acquire a laptop for logging. I planned to take my Icom 735 since it was small and would also use the 751A as a second radio if it worked. I decided to use WriteLog for Windows, mainly so I could make an audio recording of the entire contest as a souvenir. I now have 8 CD-ROMs of audio to listen to when the bands are dead. I also ordered the parts and built the external W5XD keyer.
When we got to Windwood, it was late at night. A few stars were out, and I spotted the north star close to the horizon and verified that the house faced exactly west. In fact, you can stand in the living room, look through the bedroom hallway, and see the north star through the sliding glass door. The amplifier sat on the dining room floor, where we left it for our entire stay.
I spent the first morning putting the station together. Somehow, I missed the bedroom closet with all the goodies, but my wife found it after I mentioned that I thought there would be more equipment. There I found the Icom 751A, an MFJ differential-T 3kW tuner, which I really didn't need, an MFJ watt meter which had little rubber feet that were melted into really stickly black goo that I managed to get on some of my equipment, some wire that I could ground my rig with, a Bencher paddle, and lots of smaller lengths of coax. I also saw, but didn't use, a Heil headset with adapter cable (I don't remember if it was for Icom or Yaesu), and an MFJ voice keyer. Outside, on the south side of the basement, is a storage room with lots of coax and the 3.5kW generator. I didn't try it out.
By evening of the first day, I had everything set up (we did spend much of the day driving around after a rainstorm in the morning), so I decided that it might be fun to see if the Japanese were interested in working a KP2 station. I forgot to turn the audio recorder on right away, but I think it only took one CQ, and after about two QSOs, I had a pileup. Ten meters was in great shape, with only a little polar distortion, and the pileup lasted two hours. That night turned out to be the one with the best propagation. The comments on the packet cluster indicated that I was very loud, even with only 100 watts. Now that I've had a chance to listen to the recording, I think I should have set the keyer at a higher speed (I think it was at 18 wpm) and spread out the stations a little more. I didn't think a KP2 station would be much of an attraction, but I was wrong. And I had more trouble dealing the the pileup than I thought I would, but I tried to learn quickly.
Before the contest, I tried to look for VY1JA in the Yukon so I would know what frequency to find him during the contest, but I couldn't find him. Fortunately, I did find him on Sunday afternoon . With about ten minutes to go before the start of the contest, I found a fairly open frequency and started calling CQ, hoping to hold the frequency until the start of the contest. After a few brief contacts, I started the contest by calling CQ, but was immediately run off the frequency by some 5-land station. After a minute or so, I found a better frequency and was off and running. I had rates of 80+ QSOs per hour for the first three hours.
I wondered if working Puerto Rico and St. Thomas would be a problem in the SS, since it looked like they might be far enough away to be in the skip zone for the higher bands. However, being 900 feet above sea level, we could see St. Thomas, St. John, and Tortola out the north window and Vieques Island (KP4) to the northwest. I worked several KP4s during the test, all with strong signals on the higher bands.
I shouldn't have been surprised to find the Venezuelan time station instead of WWV on 5 MHz.
The Force-12 C3E beam worked great and looked new. The air in the tropics is unbelievably corrosive, and every exposed piece of metal is rusted or oxidized. The R7000 only worked on 10 and 12 meters, so I suspect a corrosion problem even though the antenna was installed the previous spring. I never tried the 80/160 meter dipole, other than listening briefly and not hearing much. The 40 meter 2-element beam worked, but it didn't seem to be as directional as I expected. I worked a lot of people off the side (Europe while pointing NW) and got strong signal reports.
The house has a roof that overhangs the walls leaving space for a balcony-like walkway around the entire perimeter of the house. There is a basement apartment below the north part of the house. There is a metal roof which allows for collecting the rain water in a cistern that supplies the house with water. There is no attic, so when it rains, the noise level is deafening. I would think that it could be a problem on SSB.
The coaxial cables need to be brought into the house through the sliding glass door by the operating table. I found some masking tape with which I could seal the crack in the door to try to keep out the gnats. Flying bugs are not a problem when the sun is up, but you have to shut the screens after dark or you will have lots of small gnats in the house. I got plenty of small bites on my legs, which I think were from the gnats, although there were some small ants around the station also. The bites don't hurt, but they do itch a few days later. The gnats are quite attracted to light, so if the only light in the house is at the table, you may want to find a better solution than the masking tape. At any point, we had about a dozen millipedes in the house, each about and inch or two long. They don't seem to hurt anything, but they crunch when you step on them. I did wake up one night to find one crawling on my face! I guess there has to be something less than perfect in paradise.
Although I'm pretty happy with how I did during the contest, I learned a lot from my mistakes:
I think I should have started at a higher speed than the 24 words per minute. And I probably could have ended each qso with TU rather than TU WP2Z more often when multiple stations were calling. Consequently, my top rate was about 84 QSOs per hour. For example, at 0004Z, my QSO NR 254 was with K5GN, who gave me NR 309.
I should have had a narrower filter than 500 kHz. That's fine for search and pounce, but when things get crowded, other stations with narrower filters can park themselves so close that I can't hear stations calling me, yet I'm not bothering the other guy enough to make him move.
I need more experience with operating two radios, and it could be that the WriteLog software will never work as well as TR for that purpose. However, it was good that I had both radios set up, because I was amazed how hot the PS-55 power supply got for my Icom 735. I switched to the backup radio, an Icom 751A, occassionally just so the power supply would cool off. It also had narrower filters, so I should have used it more than I did.
I took a half hour of 'off time' Sunday morning during daylight hours. I should have taken that time during darkness, because 40 meters just didn't work as well as the higher bands. I also spent about 15 minutes chasing a VE1 multiplier early Sunday, including running outside to manually rotate the 40 meter beam northward. Of course, I worked a few other maritime stations later on. The last few hours of the contest were really slow, and fortunately I saved a whole hour of 'off time' for the end.
I wish I had spent more time before the contest listening for QRN and QRM. Just after sundown, there was some sort of strange interference about 65 kHz up from the bottom of the band on both 10 and 15 meters. Later, I read the notes from someone who had been to Windwood before and discovered that Anita, who lived in the basement apartment, was an artist who made jewelry and used some equipment that might have been the source of the QRN. Of course, there is the free world's biggest oil refinery just five miles away, so there may be some QRN coming from that as well.
I thought on Saturday that I stayed on 10 meters too long, and then stayed on 15 meters too long. On Sunday night, I tried to move sooner, but conditions were worse, and I probably didn't move soon enough then either. On the other hand, the higher bands worked better than 40 meters, so I probably should have stayed on 20 meters longer.
I had some hope that I might be the only low power station from the Virgin Islands, so I had a chance at winning the section, but I heard NP2B on Sunday about 50 QSOs ahead of me. While I slowly gained on him the rest of the day, his final claimed score was 17 QSOs better. I also heard K0DI/KP2 and the KP2D multi-op station, so no one should have had a problem working VI. My final QSO totals are 443, 327, 273, and 67 QSOs on 10, 15, 20, and 40 meters respectively for a total of 1,110 QSOs and 80 sections. I worked only one Wyoming station, and that was in the first 20 minutes of the contest. I finally worked VY1JA on Sunday afternoon, and MAR, QC, and WTX seemed to take a long time to get in the log, but I ended up with several of each.
After the contest, I managed a few more appearances on CW, but didn't try calling CQ on SSB. I did work one station on SSB, an FO0 with a really strong signal. I did hear a 5T5 station but could not break through the pile of Europeans.
Although I was told about the pileups, I was really quite surprised that I could create a pileup so quickly. I figured KP2 was one of the easier countries to work, since WP2Z is on during nearly every major international contest. But it might be tougher than I realized for Asian and even European stations. Whatever the reason, I now know that you should expect to create a pileup whenever you call CQ.
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Bottom axis is time from 21:00 UTC (5pm AST) to 02:00 UTC (10pm AST)
Colors indicate frequency band (10, 15, 20, and 40 meters)