The Sapphire Beach Club is 10 stories tall and was built by the owner of the island concrete company. The building has withstood every hurricane so far with minimal damage only to the awnings and landscaping. This is a picture of the front side of the building which faces north. Please notice the R-7000 Cushcraft 40-10 meter vertical on the top of the building just to the left of the cellular phone antenna.

Here is Bil, W8EB showing W1HL,"Hot Lips" Bob, AA1M and Mike,W1USN the antenna setup on the roof.

This area at the top of the building houses one of the a/c units and the cellular phone antenna and equipment.

Now if you will look just to the left of the "S" in Sapphire on the front of the building, you will see a black line, that is the coax feedline which runs from the roof to our room on the left side of the picture. In addition to the R-7000 vertical I have 127 foot sloper antenna attached at the top of the building for 80 and 160 meter operations.

Here is a photo of the PJ8/W8EB operating layout for the year 2000, on the kitchen counter top, Hi.

Starting from the right and working left, you will see the small red miniature iambic keyer, then the laptop which is used for logging, rig control and cw keying.

In the center is the Yaesu FT-900CAT hf rig with the KamPlus TNC for RTTY on top.

On the left is the power supply and the Timewave 9+ DSP unit and a remote speaker on top. I also use the Yaesu DVS-2 which is the Digital Voice Recorder, great for the contests calling CQ, Hi.

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Because of the new recipical licensing international agreement the callsign of PJ8A was no longer available thus I was issued the contest callsign of PJ7B.

The 2001 contest station consisted of a Yaesu FT-900CAT radio, Yaesu Fl-2100Z amplifier, Yaesu DVS-2 digital voice recorder, Dentron AT-1K antenna tuner, MFJ 12 volt power supply, Heil Pro headset, Dell Laptop computer with CT contest software logging program, and the Cushcraft R-7000 vertical.

1131 qso's were logged for the 2001 contest, with only 9 hours at the mike because most of the U.S. hams are pointing those beams toward Europe in the mornings.

For the 2002 contest, we operated as as a multi-op, single transmitter with K8RLM and W8EB as the operators. Only 600 qso's were logged this year, conditions for us were not as good as previous years.

The 2002 contest station used the Kenwood TS-2000 radio, Ameritron 811H amplifier, Dentron AT-1K antenna tuner, MFJ 12-volt power supply, Heil Pro headset, Dell Laptop computer using the CT contest software for logging and the Cushcraft R-7000 vertical.

For the 2003 contest, my wife, W8DVC and I W8EB operated as a multi-op, single transmitter station making over 1200 contacts in 9 hours of operating time.

For the 2004 contest, there were four operators, K8RLM-Bob, his wife Lori-W9MSU, my wife Dorothy-W8DVC and myself, Bil-W8EB. We made only 555 contacts, most were on 15 and 20 meters. We did a few QSO's on 40 but 10 meters was inactive for us and our 80 and 160 meter antenna was down for the contest.

The 2003 and 2004 contest station used a Yaesu FT-100D radio, Ameritron 811H amplifier, MFJ-12volt power supply, Heil Pro headset, Dell and Averatec Laptop conputers running the CT-Contest, WF1B, WriteLog and DX4WIN software for the logging. Antennas are the Cushcraft R-7000 vertical for 40 to 10 meters and a 124 foot long wire for 80 and 160. Both antennas are mounted on top of the 10 story hotel.

In addition to the contest activity I spent most of my non-contesting ham time on 80 meter phone and 160 cw. I had a very strong QRN on 160 so I was not able to make the number of contacts I had hoped for. PSK31 activity was not as strong as in previous years.

Qsl all PJ7B, PJ7WB and PJ7/W8EB contacts to W8EB.

The 2005 ARRL DX phone contest found us with a dead amplifier so we ran the contest will just 100 watts. I was surprised that we could hold a frequency with low power but we did it. Rig was the FT-100d, same antennas as in previous years. John, VE1JS was the quest operator for Saturday and I ran the contest on the second day. Lots of fun for sure.

An ironing board is a perfect portable table for the contest station. I have used the ironing board for the past couple of years, you can set the height at any level.

A new rig and antenna design was used in the 2006 ARRL DX SSB contest. I can not say enough about the new Icom-7000 HF rig, it has all the features of a full size rig but in a mobile size cabinet, a fantastic radio. For the antenna I used a 155 ft. long wire in a lazy "Z" configuration using the building's lightning ground cable as the counterpoise. An MFJ Automatic Antenna Tuner, MFJ-991B, matched the IC-7000 to the Long Wire antenna.

Murphy arrive on Sunday, we have to move to a different room and the coax connectors loosened up so that the ground was lost. I thought the bands had gone south only to find out the next day that the bands were in one of their best conditions. Oh well next year, Hi.

Now let this be a lesson to all of you,

"To much contesting along with to much time on the island will have a mental and physical effort on the human body, Hi".

That is Ron ND5S in the forefront and Bil W8EB bringing up the rear.

We had just finished the 2000 ARRL DX Phone Contest and were a little over the edge.

There were two operating positions, one in the living area and the another in the bedroom. Both laptops were networked together using a PCMCIA card so that our laptop serial ports were still available to use as a rig control.

This is the special QSL Card that was design by Ron, ND5S for the St. Maarten contacts, both contest and regular activities for the years 1995 to 2000.

The photo is of Cupecoy Beach and in the background the spire of the Sapphire Beach Club can be seen and if you look real close you may see the R-7000 vertical on the roof next to the sphire.

QSL requests for PJ8A go to Bob, W9NIP, who is also the President of the Great Lakes DX / Contest Club, with the other PJ8/Homecall contact QSL's going to the home calls, either W8EB or ND5S.

A new QSL card for the new callsigns of PJ7B which was used by W8EB during the 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004 ARRL DX Phone Contests and PJ7WB which was the regular 2001 callsign issued for the normal St. Maarten contacts as well as PJ7/W8EB contacts for the years of 2002, 2003 and 2004.

All QSL requests for PJ7B, PJ7WB and PJ7/W8EB go to W8EB.

The photo at right is of the shack of the famous FS5PL Lionel, whose home overlooks Orient Beach on the French side of St. Martin.

From left to right are Paul K9PG, Lionel FS5PL, Mike K9NW and Ron ND5S.

Lionel's shack is built under the swimming pool.

Lionel is back on the air, he is using an all band vertical for an antenna, the tower and beam are still on the ground.

When we are on the island we try to keep an open sked on 14.265+/- at 6:00pm Eastern Time or 2300GMT each Wednesday night with the ham buddies back in the States but anyone is invited to join us..