MONDAY Morning 10 July - It´s over....
Posted: Jul 10, 2006 05:08 PDT

Hi Gang

Well, it´s over. Tom, K1KI, and I did our best but our claimed score looks like 32nd place out of 46.

We drew a seemingly good site on the South side of the island about 600m from the ocean - and did much of our setup by 8PM - then after it got dark we found 20M and 40M had S9 line noise which we did not think was there at 5PM.

NOT GOOD!

I took a portable radio tuned to 26Mhz and walked down our street about midnight Friday night - and found peaks and nulls under the powerlines as I walked under the powerlines. About 1000 feet West of our site, there were four poles one after the other with incredible HASH coming from the street lamps - that lit up all the idiot lights on the portable RX.

I continued down the street with our referee LU6ETB and when we reached the end of the street, and having turned RIGHT - after about 100 yards, there was no noise at all - and this was only about 1/4 mile from our site. RATS - too bad we could not move the site......

Oh well - nothing to do - it´s all in the luck of the draw and we had the same chance as everyone else - just a bad break. That´s how it goes in these things. I understand some other teams had some tough going too - so we all have to take what we get in a WRTC draw - you cannot control what you end up with - you just go with it......

We went to bed around 2AM and I managed about 4 hrs sleep - then checked 40M at sunrise. JA´s were everywhere and they actually sound like PEOPLE down here - instead of JA´s with flutter and echoes.

Tom got in around 7:30AM (having gone back to the hotel with our referee LU6ETB) and we went through our final preparations - starting the contest at 9AM sharp with the call PW5D. Tom began for the first 2.5 hours on 15CW and then SSB and did quite well - or so we thought - around 130 per hour the second hour.

I did the next two hours and did okay - but not as well as Tom - I managed a 120 hour on 15SSB - then we lost something at 4.5 hours in - and the amp would not key and we also had no RX.

We managed to fix this after 10 mins (a faulty connector on the bandpass filter unit) - and then got back on. Nothing further in the way of failures until the end happened to us - except I especially was totally dead tired due to the late night chasing the noise - no sweat though - we still had a great time.

Highlights - JA´s on 40CW for an hour at sunrise -and the rate on 15M all day. Even 10M showed some life into Europe at times where we managed around 90 Q´s.

Lowlights - LINE NOISE S9 on 20 and 40m - rendering the use of phone on 40M out of the question. The CW filters allowed pretty consistent rates on 40CW - where we had fun and did well.

SURPRISES - The lack of any strong signals on 80M - we did work a handful of US stations - KC1XX came right back to us - others did not - HI!

We also worked a few Europeans on 80CW including OH2BH and one or two more - not many USA at all - perhaps 10 or so. The rest we did on 80 were PY´s and a few LU´s. We did work ZL6A and ZL4BR on 80M CW for a real kick. NO JA´s heard on 80 but WA1S managed one on 75M SSB when one answered a CQ she made.

At the end of the contest we were satisfied we did as well as we could considering the line noise - maybe better another year!

Congrats to the VE3EJ team, N2NT team and N2NL/N6MJ - glad to see some North American teams at the top of the pile in this one.

THE ORGANIZERS - deserve high praise for choosing such a wonderful venue here at the Costao Santinho and for making our WRTC experience so
incredible. I think everyone had a great time down here and soon it will all be over.

There is a trip up to the mountain site of PP5JR/ZX5J today - the superstation on the mountain - and I will probably go on that one. There is also a boat trip on the North bay - but I expect that with no sun and the high winds that that one will be COLD - HI HI.

73 for now

Jeff K1ZM

K1ZM@aol.com

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