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:
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 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.
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…!
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.
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.
It’s 10 minutes past 9 in the morning. I hope to go to my radio station (8 miles from home) and get on to work my friend Rus, K2UA, as he puts his first ever summit on the air. But before I do that, I wanted to share a slice of my life if it will help anyone relate to me better.
We are all busy. I get that. I am not writing this to show you how much busier I am than you are. But I do know that some will find it helpful to know exactly what chainsaws I juggle.
I woke up to emails from Tim, K3LR, about some mutual tower/antenna stuff we have going on at a personal level. Completely different from anything PJ2T has going on with DX Engineering, where as you know, Tim is a major player.
It’s on! The quorum present at the Dayton meeting voted to authorize W0CG to proceed with this project. We don’t have all the needed funds yet, but thanks to several very generous donations we are about two thirds there, so it was decided to proceed, counting on the balance of the needed funds to come along when the time comes. The plan is to arrange for the tower and lots of associated hardware and equipment to arrive at the QTH in mid-October. We’ll immediately begin painting and assembling the sections. First will be a coat of epoxy primer, which is light tan. Over that there will be a coat of epoxy white finish paint. Using white will make it extremely easy to assure that we don’t miss even the smallest spot. The third coat will be epoxy machine grey, also very easy to manage on top of a white coat. We’ll assemble the tower with all stainless steel hardware (not the galvanized stuff provided by Rohn). It will be laid in the back yard on wood blocks in place for the crane to pick it up and into position on the tower base in early 2019 once all the other needed prep is complete.
We’re hoping to be able to take advantage of DX Engineering’s very competitive domestic freight rates and piggy-back shipment of many of our own packed boxes (such as the newest AL-1200 and lots of tower parts) onto the shipment of the 10 tower sections to Miami. DX Engineering specializes in domestic freight prep and shipping, and I’m friends with most of the guys who work there. More on that as it develops. Once we get the stuff to Miami, the ocean freight portion is easy and less costly than the domestic freight. We have considerable experience doing this.
Concurrent with the tower prep we’ll assemble our new 40 meter yagi and reinforce it on the island for the Curacao harsh conditions. We have bought that XM-240 and it’s presently in the shipment staging pile at W0CG in Ohio. We’ll also do considerable prep work on the guy wires. See the comprehensive plan for the tower replacement for full details.
We learned from experience, and this tower will be done in a way that eliminates as many of the salt and corrosion vulnerabilities of our location as possible. There will, for example, be NO ELECTRICAL TAPE on the legs, as that is the number one source of corrosion. Many other lessons we have learned will be applied in the new installation.
Much of this Phase I work will be done by the CQWW SSB and CW crews. We’re hoping some ops will be able to come a bit early and stay over to help. We’ll also have professional climbers involved. Again, all the detail is in the plan that you already have in hand.
Our hope is that everything will be ready to raise the new tower in early 2019.
The Rough Numbers
We presently have about $15K in the tower fund and about $5K (after membership renewals) in the general PJ2T operating fund. That tower money will be spent VERY quickly in the coming weeks, but we’re at least not in the financial crisis mode that has characterized so much of our PJ2T operations in the past.
A year has passed since I agreed to take the job of “station equipment lead” in the CCC. What this job entails is the maintenance and development of the club’s radio equipment. This responsibility does not include the outside assets (antennas and towers) nor the computers. Geoff is still the lead for outside maintenance and Gene runs the IT department. The division of labor was designed to allow Geoff some breathing room so he can eventually return to something resembling a normal life.
Over the past year I helped to dispose of some surplus equipment that the club had accumulated, initiated the purchase of new equipment (including our third Elecraft K3) and acquired parts to maintain our workhorse Ameritron AL-1200 amplifiers. However, many other club members had a hand in all of these endeavors. Without each of us volunteering our time and expertise we will not be able to maintain this station in the long term.
I am the “lead” for station equipment maintenance. That does not mean that I will be able to do it all myself. I can afford to go to the station once a year. For the present that trip is scheduled during the CQ WW CW contest. During that trip immediate priority is given to those repairs that are critical to the success of the contest effort. After those items are taken care of I can attempt to work through the list of other repairs that have accumulated. Last year I ran out of time before many of those additional items were done. Fortunately Geoff and Gene took care of amplifier maintenance in March. As a result, we are now in very good shape with respect to amplifiers. We have six amps operating at full power and one easily repaired AL-1200 at the station. Another refurbished AL-1200 is awaiting shipment.
Club members or other users should communicate precise information about equipment failures as quickly as possible to either Gene or me, depending on whether it is computer or radio-related respectively. The exception to radio-related failures is Gene will deal with all remote-control issues. Ideally we should be informed while the reporting party is at the station, so we can begin trouble-shooting the problem with them. Team work is the key to success here.
My final comment is about our inventory system and its maintenance. We have a large amount of spare parts and equipment in storage at the station. The small items are stored in labelled bins. If you take something from one of the bins please return it to the same bin when you are through using it. Team leaders will be supplied with a copy of the detailed inventory spread sheet to help them locate needed items. If you repair a piece of equipment on the island and use a spare part then let me know the identity, quantity and original location of the item so that the inventory can be updated. This information will also tell us if we need to order more of that spare part.
I am looking forward to another successful contest season from PJ2T and will be happy to assist any member who needs help with our club equipment.
Gary Hembree, N7IR
Nobody was more surprised then I was, when word reached me here in Montana that I’d been elected Vice President of the club. I’ll keep doing my best to help us be ready, willing, and able to be competitive in contests going forward, and have maximum fun along the way. Here’s a brief update what I’ve been doing recently to extend the benefit of your club membership.
I was able to spend several weeks at Signal Point last winter helping Geoff repair and evaluate all our amps, spare transmitting tubes, and get our 16 computers contest ready. I also performed some upgrades to our three K3 transceivers to improve SSB contesting.
In addition, I learned all about the care and feeding of the house systems, and after Geoff left for Idaho Joyce and I hosted two young hams (DK6SP, and M0SDV) for a short visit, and the WPX SSB contest group from Georgia lead by K1ZN.
While on site I was happy to serve as the control op for our remote station. Before I departed, I even managed to squeeze in a test of the Elecraft KPA500 solid state amp that K8ND has loaned the remote operation to give us some QRO watts. More on that going forward as we work the kinks out – but I can tell you operating the remote station is a hoot and a half. Let me know if you want to give it a try, I have comprehensive documentation available.
On the purely fun side of things I was able to put PJ2T on 2M moonbounce this past February and make 242 contacts. I was shocked at how well the single 12 element Yagi and 900 watt amp I brought down worked. It’s good to be the DX!
We all know that many times it’s the small things that can add up to Signal Point operating improvements, so I’ve been working that. I found three replacement porcelain base knife switches on eBay for our 80/75 meter EU wire beam that we use to changing the tuning from CW to SSB and back. The salt air has pretty much destroyed the units currently in place. I just donated a Pelican 1550 case to be used as on site K3 transceiver storage. I also finally got around to making up the 80 meter stub to complement the 40 and 20 meter units I made previously.
In closing I would like to thank all of you who have generously donated to the European tower replacement project. This is a major, and necessary undertaking for the club this year. I can’t stress enough your support is critical right now as we muster the myriad of items and get them on a ship headed to Curacao. Don’t hang back, everyone of us needs to step up where we can. Thank you.
Gene Shea, KB7Q