With a solar flux of around 68 – 70 what is to be done from Signal Point in late November? As the contest director for this event it is my task to put together a great team to milk the most from these challenging conditions and see if we can repeat last year’s win. The truth is conditions, as crappy as they’ll be, favor our location on the lower end of a north/south path into North America and all those lovely three point contacts.
CQWW SSB will be an operation by TEAM CANADA – a mix of folks from the Great White North, and those that wished they lived here. Yes – its true – we CAN walk on water – in the winter, which is another good reason to head south.
Here for all to see is a re-creation of the highlights of the tower-related mass-emails flying crazily all around. Geoff W0CG has spearheaded this project with seemingly boundless energy. Seemingly tirelessly. But let’s the rest of us do a reality check, and confess we know full well Geoff’s energy is not unbounded and that we know full well how tired he must be. Heck, a lot of us are getting tired just watching Geoff work.
The outside lights had been down for months. Geoff, W0CG reports that it took about 3.5 hours late yesterday afternoon, but he succeeded in getting them finally working again. This is the inside of the J-box on the wall for that system:
Geoff, W0CG passed along that he got stopped at the Curacao airport last week and had to pay duty on the stuff in his bag. “I had a ton of replacement parts for linear amps, and a lot of tools and hardware. I gave the guy my understated invoices, kept smiling and chatting, and he charged me the outrageous duty of 13 bucks. The Red Line was closed, so there were no hard feelings when they searched my bag.”
If you get stopped, just cooperate and smile and explain that anything you are bringing in goes right back out a week later. If they insist, just pay the duty.
Jeff, K8ND and I have been running and winning single band 160 Meter contests remotely from Signal Point the last two seasons. The Stew Perry contest is a favorite because multipliers are based on distance and Curacao is a long way from even the United States. There is no east coast advantage!
The 50 year celebration in November of 2017 was an enormous success. Not only were we able to have W1FJ on the team exactly 50 years after he won the world in 1967, but we won it in ’17. This was our first win in CQWW CW, and everything came off as well as if we had scripted it. If you’ve missed it, please see the article about our operation in the May 2018 issue of CQ Magazine. Also, we QSLed the contest 100% and have received a great amount of favorable commentary worldwide for our efforts with that commemorative card.
The Caribbean Contesting Consortium has received a significant gift from our friend Al Rousseau, W1FJ. Al recently purchased a new Elecraft K3S, then graciously donated his existing Elecraft K3 transceiver to the club. As a result the club now owns four K3 transceivers! The new K3 had been checked out, updated, calibrated by Elecraft and arrived here at the N7IR radio ranch still sealed in its Elecraft shipping box. Al requested that the donation be dedicated to the original crew of PJ3CC, who won the 1967 CQWW CW contest from the Coral Cliff Hotel. Gene, KB7Q, who arranged the donation, had a small placard made that lists the members of the PJ3CC team, including Al (then W1FJJ).
Thanks to Gary, K9SG, who is a past member of the CCC, we now have a newer, better antenna to use as a fixed tribander at PJ2T. If you’ve operated at PJ2T you know we have Really Big Arrays to use in the very high-traffic directions – pointed at the United States and Europe. (In fact you’re probably aware by now that we are completely upgrading the Europe Array). In order to cover other important directions, we use a selection of other fixed and rotary antennas which require care and feeding too. Gary, who was active at PJ2T from 2003 to 2011, has given the club a Bencher Skyhawk.
As you can see online at www.pj2t.org, in the left frame, under “Upcoming Contests,” much planning has been done.
CQWW SSB will be based out of the white and blue Galo rental house on the hill with a heavily Canadian team and W3ACO feeding the team like royalty. There may be one open bed left. Interested?
CQWW CW also has one bed still open unless DF9LJ is able to get here for that contest. We’ve rented the Moran pool house for this contest.
ARRL CW (February 2019) is fully staffed, but if you’d like to join this team we can always find a room off site, no worries.
“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in,” is what Michael said in The Godfather: Part III. I am not a Mafioso, but I think that I know a little about how he felt. After four years as CCC President and a smooth transition to a new President, I was looking forward to kicking back, playing on the radio, and generally enjoying myself. That didn’t work out at the CCC Annual Meeting at Dayton last month, when I was elected CCC Treasurer. Just when I thought I was out…
Yes – the QRO Signal point remote lives. It has been set-up, configured and de-bugged. The remote operating manual is now up-to-date, and available from the club web site or direct from me. Both CW and SSB work fine, and FT-8 is being figured out. K1ZN, W0CG, NA2U, K8ND, and KB7Q have already been operating the new high-power set-up.
This state of the art club resource was all made possible by Jeff, K8ND donating the use of an Elecraft KPA500 watt amplifier, KAT500 tuner, and cabling. That’s about $2.8K of gear folks. Thanks to Jeff, K1ZN also for the gear transport from Georgia to Curacao last March. I’ve made sure that all club members who have tried to set-up and access the remote have succeeded.
You may wonder why the h3@! we have not fixed or replaced several nagging problems at the QTH, including hard to slide doors, shaky sliding screens, or any of a handful of other aggravations. The fact is that it is nearly impossible to get the needed parts, and also pretty nigh impossible to find local contractors who can or will do this work. We have done 98% of our maintenance on our own for all these years, and most things at the house are in good shape. But some of the work, such as getting new sliders, is almost impossible. Many such things are extremely difficult on the island. Thanks for being tolerant of the stuff that does not work right. We know about it and are trying very hard.
Last March, Gene Shea, KB7Q, and his XYL Joyce participated in an experiment with caretaking of the station. They stayed on site after I left and hosted contests and took care of the QTH and worked on several station projects. They of course paid no rent, and were reimbursed 50% of the metered utility usage and 33.3% of the cost of their rental vehicle. This is advantageous on both sides. This enabled them to have some time on the tropics and access to the big station inexpensively compared to the full costs of a rental home elsewhere in a warm place, yet it enabled PJ2T to continue to operate, provided the fun of remote operating PJ2T for those of us who do that, and made for great security for our house and equipment when teams visited. The experiment was a success, and they have indicated that they will probably do it again in 2019. The advantage for me is that I was able to leave about a month earlier than every before and get back to a happy non-solitary life at home with Dorothy. If any one else in CCC is interested in being caretaker at some other time of the calendar year, let’s talk…!
Because it was such a monumental occasion, being the 50th anniversary of the first entry into the CQ Worldwide contest from Signal Point, we opted to QSL 100% for this contest. Geoff, W0CG, designed a foldout commemorative card and arranged for printing by a vendor in Vancouver who has done super work for us before. PVRC donated $300 of the printing cost and our former member K4LT (now AD8CW) also donated $300. NA2U kicked in $50 and the club covered the small remaining balance. From there W9VA did a TREMENDOUS job printing and sticking labels and sending out the cards for distribution. W0TT, W0CG, and W1FJ himself also helped with the distribution.
Our club has been using Microsoft Windows 7 Professional operating system for many years now on our contest logging computers. It’s pretty stable, everyone has learned the interface, and it runs fine on modest machines. There are two issues however that suggest we might have to move on to Windows 10 down the line. WIN7 Install media and proper licenses for any new computers we get are getting harder to find, even on eBay. Microsoft stopped mainstream support for WIN7 in 2015, and will terminate all support the first day of 2020. Our computer are all hooked to the Internet so a steady stream of security patches is highly desirable to keep our machines safe. That will be ending in 2020.
K8ND writes:
One of the benefits of membership is a free set of badges. The last order was sent a year ago. As a newer member, if you have not received your badge set yet, or if you have lost one or more of the PJ2T badges, please let me know via email, and I will assemble a new order. The first set is free. Replacements are at your expense, including shipping.
Not an allusion to perpetual island attire, here is a grouping of short newsworthy items for this month, which may become a regular newsletter column. So much to keep up with!
Most of you know Howard and Mary Gay Stone, the seniors who have owned the house next door since 1971. Recently they sold it to their daughter Lynne and her husband Mike Maley. As you probably saw, Lynne finally retired this January at age 61 after much urging from Mike. She went back to Chicago in mid-February to be with her daughter for the birth of a child.
Soon after, Lynne was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic and liver cancer. Neither Lynne nor Mike had any idea she was even ill. Lynne passed away within a few weeks, so all of the family next door can use our sympathy when we see them at the island house.
Each year we draw from a hat at the Dayton meeting to see who wins a $200 trip subsidy to Curacao for the coming season. This year Keith Wishmeier, WA9S, was the lucky winner, and that discount will be applied to his trip in February 2019 for ARRL DX CW. This is funded half from the PJ2T general treasury and half as a donation from the W0CG real estate fund.
Mark Beckwith, N5OT, was elected to serve as the club’s President at the Dayton CCC Annual Meeting. Mark is a top operator and brings the tremendous asset to the club that he is extremely well-connected in the contesting community. He seems to know everybody and vice-versa. He led the fund drive for the Europe tower and now we look forward to his leadership as PJ2T moves toward its 20th year. As president, N5OT also produces the club newsletter.
Gene Shea, KB7Q, was not present at the Dayton meeting, so of course we elected him Vice-President. Gene has been Mister Do Everything since he joined the group, serving as a contest team leader, the computer guru for the station, and moving us single-handedly into the realm of remote operations. Gene is a retired teacher, very patient and gifted at conveying difficult concepts, always has a smile, and is always gracious in dropping what he’s doing to be a tutor and support guy. He also put PJ2T on the EME map in a big was with 2 meter moonbounce earlier this year, very exciting to witness.