P40L-P49Y Contest Summary Information

AE6Y November 2007 Aruba Trip Notes – CQWW CW Contest

Andrew L. Faber, AE6Y, P49Y
11/29/07 (Public version)

Monday, November 19 - Tuesday, November 20, 2007.  Took the redeye to Miami, which left at the early time of 8:45 p.m., so didn’t have time to go home a shower as normal, but I did change clothes and give myself a quick shave in my office building parking garage.  Arrived at 5 in the morning. A five-hour layover in the Admirals’ Club and one flight later, I was in Aruba at 2:00 p.m. local time.  Chris and Cindy drove up exactly as I arrived, and drove me to the house, where Jean-Pierre and Andy were waiting. I unpacked and gave presents to them all, plus the FT-101 series speaker that I had brought down for JP.  My brand new Elecraft K3 had survived the trip unscathed, and I set it up and gave JP a brief introduction to it. 

Thanks to receiving a very good mileage deal from AA, I actually flew first class coast to coast and business class to Aruba, the seats were kind of ratty and tired on these old AA 757s.  Since I slept all the way to MIA, not sure if there were any first class amenities other than lots of legroom, but did get a nice meal on the way to Aruba.

John Crovelli had left a welcome message on the answering machine, so I drove over to say hello.  As usual, he was working outside, this time changing out guy wires for Phillystran.  The a/c in the car is now working fine.  OTOH, the transmission is slipping when cold and shifting rough when warm, and next day the speedometer quit working.  The check engine light is on (JP says it’s the oxygen sensor, not to worry), the seatbelt light is on (probably due to the broken driver’s cable, thought the belts are fine) and the battery light is on (again, JP says the charging system is OK, and later on the light did go out).  Other than that, the car is fine.

Brought the beverage feedlines in through the window, hooked them up to the new K9AY switchbox, but initially nothing worked.  The wiring was messed up, and only one beverage was labeled.  Later on I straightened out the wiring and did label the three beverages that are set up (EU, West US, and East US).  There is a fourth coax, which was for the East-West beverage that John Fore used in May, but is now not up.

The temperature was in the low 80s during the day and relatively non-humid, so working outdoors was rather pleasant.  It obviously hasn’t rained in a while, as there is no standing water at Frenchman’s Pass.  [For the rest of the trip, there were off and on rain squalls – some of which were quite noisy and fierce at times – which had the desirable impact of cleaning the power lines so there was no line noise, though it did compromise outdoor activities a bit.]

By late afternoon, I decided I could either (1) walk the beverages, (2) go shopping, or (3) go running.  Option one was rejected after looking out the back gate and seeing that considerable pruning was required just to get out into the cunucu, option two was rejected due to traffic considerations, so I went for my usual run at Savaneta from Marina Pirata to La Granja and back.  Felt weak and tired, but was glad to get some exercise. 

After a quick Subway sandwich dinner, I removed the left 756 Pro2 and set up the K3 with the Winkeyer and the computer.  With the new DSL wireless router, it’s very convenient just to leave the computer in the shack, instead of having to cart it back and forth to the dining room to plug into the landline.  [To use it, just plug in both the router and the hub, and connect to the wireless system called “Frostholm”, with no security at all required.]  Also, my GSM cell phone now works automatically on arrival, with no longer an need to change the network settings.

I have the K3 set up as a standalone radio, not running through the DX Doubler.  It’s set up as follows:  Monitor plugged into laptop, USB port to PS2 Y-adaptor to external keyboard and mouse, Serial port on laptop (COM 1) to K3 RS-232 port, second USB port to Winkeyer, Winkeyer output to Key In on K3 (with Y-adaptor for keying box to close the circuit for tune-up), Winkeyer PTT to Y-adaptor (with footswitch) to PTT on K3,  Headphones to K3.  All connections to K3 are on the back panel, which makes it very convenient. 

I was running a nice pileup barefoot on 40 CW when I got a call on the landline from Ken, K6TA, telling me that the first dot or dash was being clipped off.  This explained the fact that many stations were repeating their callsigns when they came back.  I hadn’t noticed the clipping, since all the characters were being heard on the monitor.  But it was solvable by adding “lead time” (i.e., time between when Winkeyer asserts PTT and starts sending CW to the radio) to the Winkeyer settings in CQPWIN.  Any amount, even only 10 msec, seemed to be enough to solve the problem.  Later I got an email from K6NA commenting on the same effect.  Thanks, Ken and Glenn!

I noticed another K3 issue, however, which was that when transmitting if the Width or Shift controls are adjusted the power would go to zero.  Emails to and from Elecraft showed that this was a known bug, on the list to be fixed.  BTW, before the contest I loaded two new versions of firmware from the Elecraft website, including one dated on Thanksgiving Day!  A great feature of the radio for setting up the station is the TX Test mode, which does everything to transmit except put out power.  I also had an email discussion with them about allowing the RIT settings to be continuously displayed, instead of VFO B reverting to frequency display.  In general, with the current firmware, there is no way to see the settings for RIT or for Bandwidth without actually turning the knobs (which unfortunately changes the setting). 

Did some reprogramming to fix a glitch where Winkeyer wouldn’t send a period as a question mark.  In general, I did much more on the fly reprogramming on this trip than ever before.  This was mostly due to finding issues with my Winkeyer programming, and also adapting to the mini-keyboard. 

Checked office e-mail and to bed at midnight after a rather full day.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007.  Woke up at about 7:30 and walked the beverages.  This required some branch cutting but wasn’t too bad, once the first 20 feet or so out the back gate were trimmed.  All three wires are physically intact, and the feedlines are connected.  I did notice that on both the East US and West US beverages, the wire connection to the K9AY transformers was discolored due to corrosion, so I trimmed off a bit of wire and stripped it to expose clean  metal for the connections.  Then a trip to Ling & Sons; violating my normal rule of not shopping when hungry led me to spend about $150 (as compared to a more normal $80-90), buying quite a bit more food than needed.  But it’s such a nice store….

I tried out the mini-keyboard that Ed Muns, W0YK, uses for RTTY. The attraction is the small size, which allows easier access to the radio without having to reach over an ungainly keyboard.  [I did use it in the contest, but probably won’t again.  The problem is that the editing keys are small and not in a logical grouping, so correcting callsigns is awkward.]  It did require some reprogramming: (1)  setting PGUP and PGDN to serve as plus and minus keys to change CW speed; (2) setting key mappings so that all of the “\”, “]” and Up Arrow keys work as the Insert key, instead of just one of them.

While doing this, John dropped by and wanted to go to lunch; he treated me to a chicken sandwich at La Granja.  On my return, I ran some guys on 20 CW, using the call P40Y, which I had reactivated, and for which Chris had picked up the license at the DTZ.  [This was probably a mistake, BTW, as it may have contributed to excessive dupes in the contest caused by my P49Y call being mis-spotted on the cluster as P40Y].  I also hooked up the IF output from the K3 to the antenna input on the right Pro2, which allows the Pro2 to function as a bandscope for the K3 (tune the Pro2 to 8.215 MHz, CW mode).  Pretty slick.  Ed Muns had mentioned that this was possible, but I was skeptical until I tried it.  Fortunately, we have a variety of BNC cables and adaptors on hand now. 

Holly’s plane from San Juan, PR, was supposed to arrive at 3:40 p.m., but she called and said it had been delayed.  I ultimately picked her up at the airport at 7:20 p.m. after a run at Savaneta.  Lissette and Lisandro picked us up at about 8:30 for a delayed dinner at Don Carlos on the waterfront in Oranjestad, full of delightful conversation and also very good and plentiful food.  Holly took back some pasta that she then had for dinner one night during the contest.  

Thursday, November 22, 2007.  Having gone to bed after midnight, I slept until almost 9 a.m., then did a bit more programming.  I decided to implement a command that would clear the RIT after each TU message following sending an exchange in run mode.  This feature is turned on or off with CTRL-R command.  I used it most of the time in the contest and found it helpful, particularly since one can’t tell with the K3 the magnitude of the RIT offset (though there are helpful LEDs that do show the direction).  I was mindful of the potential problems of extensive programming right before a contest, which violates Dave Leeson’s maxim: “Don’t change the spark plugs right before the race.”  But everything did work out OK, with no contest surprises. 

I ran some Europeans on 20 CW to verify that the Alpha 87 worked properly.  Unfortunately, the same CW problem as before resurfaced, this time solved by fixing a programming error that had caused Winkeyer lead and tail times not to be saved properly. It’s very helpful to listen to the transmitted signal on the other radio to verify these subtle points.

Holly got up at about 11:30, and we had sandwiches together while deciding how to spend the day.  We first stopped by Lisandro’s and Lissette’s.  He was away, but there was a 10-foot moon bounce dish on the ground next to a pole set in newly poured concrete.  He’s been setting this up with Allen Katz, K2UYH, who wants to participate in a moon bounce contest on 1296 MHz over the weekend.  Lissette showed us around the house, which has been coming along great since I first saw it when they started to remodel.  We also sampled her excellent arroz con pollo. 

We visited for a while with JP, Chris, Andy and Cindy, chatting and admiring his shack, which now looks something like a vintage Yaesu museum.  We intended to go to Baby Beach at Seroe Colorado, but on a whim turned north at the coast instead of south, and ended up at Boca Grandi beach.  This is one of the few usable beaches on the east side of the island, with a strand that must go on for half a mile or so.  There were three very experienced kite boarders in the water. They were towed by airfoils at high speeds parallel to the beach in both directions in the 20-30 mph winds and sometimes would do flips and jumps.  It was very entertaining.  After they left, we were the only people on the beach – along, unfortunately with a lot of trash.  But the water was warm with good surf. 

After a shower and change of clothes, John came by to pick us up for our Thanksgiving dinner, for which I had arranged to treat him and JP and Chris at the Hyatt.  It was a somewhat crowded buffet, but did feature turkey and appropriate traditional accompaniments.  At the end of dinner, Lisandro, Lissette and Al Katz showed up, with Lisandro being the only guy in the restaurant actually wearing a tie! 

Back home, I lent our 87A to John.  His Titan had a power supply problem, and Emily’s loaner 87A had a problem with the RF output relay.  I thought he could use the auto band switching feature of the 87A to good advantage, while I could be satisfied with the 86, since I was going to operate 40m single band only. 

Holly and I talked for a while, checked email, and turned in.

Friday, November 23, 2007. Getting up at 8, I checked the radio and could hear Caribbean stations working JAs almost two hours after our sunrise.  I woke Holly at 9, as we had decided to go hiking in Arikok National Park in the morning to try to avoid the noonday sun and heat.  To get there, you turn right in Santa Cruz, ending up on a poor, unpaved road that leads to a “visitor center” in the park.  This was a shack, where a ranger took a look at my miserable, virtually illegible,  Xeroxed one-page map that I had received a few years ago and pronounced it current.  In spite of his muddled directions, we managed to find the trailhead to the Ceroe Arikok hike, which is the same I hike I had taken before. 

Just as I remembered, it was delightful.  The trail is in great condition, having been carefully constructed with substantial grading, rock walls in some places, even flagstones here and there.  There seem to be more signposts on the trail than on the roads – and, as I noted before, the trail is in much better shape.  Holly loved it as well, and it was great to get some exercise.  We saw many wild goats and lizards.  There was a good view from the top of the hill, marred only by a group of tourists who had ridden ATVs up the dirt road on the back side of it.  We saw no one else on our two-hour hike, other than one young couple from Boston.

After lunch and a rest we set off for Eagle Beach, again stopping by Lisandro’s to check on progress. The dish was now mounted, and he and Allen were fabricating the sheet metal feed assembly.  We set up our two beach chairs on a relatively unpopulated part of the beach under a thatched umbrella shelter and dozed and read and swam, while dodging brief rain squalls. 

Back home, I took a nap for an hour, while Holly amused herself, then we had dinner and I prepared some food for the contest, making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a cream cheese and jelly sandwich for later and setting out a bowl of candies and cookies for the shack.

CQWW CW Contest Saturday, November 24 - Sunday, November 25, 2007 – Contest notes more or less as dictated during the contest.  The contest starts at 0000Z (8 p.m. local time Friday night).  I had decided to go 40m Single Band, on the assumption that I could then have some daytime hours free to spend with Holly.  I planned to operate from 0000Z to about 1230Z the first night, then from about 2030Z to 1230Z the second night and then from about 2030Z to 2359Z the last evening.  [Note that a more serious effort would have extended these hours in both directions, and also wouldn’t have slept for two hours the second night.  Thus, I worked 28 hours, but EA8/OH4NL, who beat me by about 300 QSOs, said he was on for 37 hours].

I find a clear frequency at 7017.6.  It’s now 0307Z and I’m at 614 Qs by 53 mults.  At 0401Z, the total is 781 by 47 countries and 16 zones.  Holly left at 10 p.m., picked up by Lissette to go out dancing.  I have the beam at 30 degrees, which seems to be a good compromise for EU and US.  At 0430Z, K2BA opens up on my frequency.  I feel justified in asking him to QSY after having made 850 Qs on the same spot

It’s 0616Z and I’m at 1166 by 60 countries and 20 zones.  I’ve been on the same freq the whole time, but things are starting to slow down.  AH2R called in from zone 27 a little while ago, so I turn the beam northwest to see if I can get some Pacific mults.  I start searching and pouncing for mults at 0620Z and work 21 of them in the next 40 minutes.  [In retrospect, maybe should have done this earlier.  Interestingly, the 0500Z hour shows 167 Qs and 8 mults, while the 0600Z hour produces 67 Qs and 28 mults.]

At 0645 I take a 10-minute break for some food.  First zone 32, ZM4A in New Zealand is at 0712Z, and the first JA, JH1SYN, at 0742Z.  I hear music outside at 0809, and it turns out to be Holly returning from her night of partying, being driven by Dennis, a friend of Lissette’s, in, of all things, a party bus.  We chat for 20 minutes.  She had fun, but the clubs weren’t really serious dance clubs.  It was very nice of Lissette to arrange the evening, and was quite an experience for them both.

Things have really slowed down (temporarily) at 1021Z, with no answers to multiple CQs.  I’m at 1475/93/25.  The log shows a 15-minute break, during which John came by to borrow my spare 12v Astron supply, which I had agreed to lend him when we worked a little while ago.  Since it’s powering the second radio, there goes my bandscope.  He says that his is broken, and was only letting him put out about 10 watts from the radio, so about 300 watts from the 87A.  I brew some coffee to try to stay awake.  Beaming west, I finally work my first zone 30, VK4DHF, at 1052Z. 

At 1211Z, there are still some stations calling, but I’m having huge troubles staying awake, so I’m going to pack it in for the morning.  Note that this is an hour and 40 minutes or so after local sunrise.  [Probably a mistake, as the log shows 25 stations, all NA with one JA, in the preceding 11 minutes! Shudda kept going.]   The first night’s total is 1616/98/27 for 595k points. 

I go right to bed and sleep till waked by the alarm at noon, feeling not terribly refreshed – but a shower helps.  I wake Holly, and we go up the Seaport Center, having lunch at the Dutch Pancake House, then to Eagle Beach at the Divi Resort.  We are chased by rain at both places, but have a good meal and a pleasant beach excursion, using the chaises from the resort and parking under one of their thatched shelters. 

I’m back on the air at 2030Z (4:30 p.m. local time).  The band is open to EU, and I have the beam pointed northeast, also hoping to get called by a VU in zone 22 (which surprisingly bears 36 degrees from Aruba).  Sure enough at 2058Z, VU2PTT calls in for that zone (and later VU2PAI as well).  In the middle of a EU run, at 2136Z, VK9AA calls in for a nice zone 29 double mult  (I don’t think he is northeast of us, but the band certainly was wide open, and this an hour before sunset, to boot!).  Twenty minutes later D2NX calls in for my only zone 36; in general, African zones are very light, and I never even hear zones 37 or 39.  I start to get middle eastern callers as well, including 4Z5TA and A71EM.  At about 2220Z, US stations start to dupe me, probably due to an erroneous P40Y spot. 

I have Geoclock running on the screen and am watching the grey line.  In the next half hour, 9V1YC in Singapore and 9M2CNC in West Malaysia make an appearance near their sunrise.   I try using the beverages on receive, as there is a bit more band noise than yesterday.  But something odd happens occasionally, especially when using the East US beverage:  the amp lights up (without actually faulting) and the K3 power readout suddenly goes bad.  Turning the power knob then makes everything OK, except that the power scale on the meter and the readout erroneously show low power; for example, with the amp putting out 1 kw (which is at about 32 watts from the TX), the K3 says it’s putting out about 8 watts.  This is very peculiar – maybe due to an RF path within the radio?  I’m not using the surge suppressors on the RX ant, so it may be that excessive current is being fed back into the radio.  I still occasionally use the beverages, but try to remember to switch back to the normal antenna when transmitting.  It’s generally safe to use the EU beverage, though.

A milestone at 2352Z: approaching 2000 Qs.    I stay on 7057.91 for over two hours.  At 0002Z, TF3GB in Iceland calls in for a nice double mult, and my only zone 40 of the contest (never hear TF4M, the multi op station, at which Yngvi, TF3YH, had told me when we chatted on 20 before the contest that he would be).  I’m starting to get broadcast radio interference, so I take a 19-minute break for some food, then resume on 7052.  A milestone, at contact 2358, one million points.  Next double mult is ZS4TX, South Africa, at 0428Z for the only zone 38 of the contest. 

Holly comes back home at 0518Z, and we chat for a while (a 24-minute break).  She had gone to the movies (Elizabeth the Queen), then had ended up at Lisandro’s and Lissette’s, where they were having a parrillada barbeque, with Al Katz, a few friends and Lissette’s mom and sister.  She had a good time, and they all conversed in Spanish.  Al was apparently finally chased off the air by heavy rains, as he was sitting with his electronics under a tarp outside next to the dish. 

I’m getting really tired, so decide to take a two-hour nap.  I have no contacts from 0700Z to 0920Z.  Then Japanese  are calling in, and I finally get a zone 18 station, RU0AW, in Siberia at 0939Z.  Exactly an hour later, RW0LT gives me zone 19.  These are my only Qs in those zones.  I make an interesting discovery: my Panasonic noise-canceling headphones completely take out the noise of the room air conditioner (it’s louder than in the past, since it only works on high fan mode).  Things are really slowing down, and I turn off the radio at 1220Z, with the last contact, surprisingly, being YD3KWR in zone 28 (Indonesia).  This is a very long path, but in the past it has seemed that they can be worked at odd moments of the day, apparently due to their being antipodal from Aruba.  Total after two nights: 3007 contacts in 125 countries and 34 zones, for 1.392M points. 

Lisandro wakes me with a telephone call at 11:45 a.m. ( I was going to sleep until noon), wanting me to tell Holly that they are going to go flying model airplanes at one or one-thirty, and asking if she wanted to go along.  I reach Holly by calling my cell phone that she has borrowed; she is in the flea market in north Oranjestad buying presents.  She returns, but we decline the invitation, opting instead to have lunch at Palm Beach (near the high rise hotels).  I use the interim to do some more mid-contest reprogramming.  Normally, when you enter a callsign, it leaves one space in the exchange box in front of the zone, assuming you are in run mode.  It’s usually easy to delete the space when in search and pounce mode, so the program will send the S&P exchange.  But on this little keyboard, it’s hard to find the delete key.  So I modify the program so that pressing Shift-Insert will send the S&P exchange, ignoring the space. Then pressing Shift-Enter, as before, will log the call without sending the TU message. 

We have a very pleasant light lunch at the Beachcomber restaurant, right on the beach at the start of several high-rise condo projects, then a very pleasant hour-long walk and chat along the beach.  This gives us a good idea of what it would be like to have a timeshare there, as there are lots of people, but it’s a pleasant atmosphere.  As you walk up the beach, there are wind-surfing and kite-boarding places on the water.  It is very pleasant.  Since we are near the north end of the island, we stop off to see Martin, P49MR, and admire his new, white-painted tower.  We can only stay for a few minutes, but we also drive by John Bayne’s, P40A, place so I can show his villa to Holly. 

Back on the air at 2022Z, and it’s an EU and US run for the remaining few hours of the contest.  I get mis-spotted at 2340 with a sudden flurry of dupes. Since it seems generally better just to work dupes, that is what I normally do, but I’m getting so frustrated that  I turn on the QSO B4 message.  Amusingly P40W calls in and gets that message.  Of course, as John explains later, he knows he worked me before and just wanted to ask for a move to 80 for the mult.  I was in such a bad mood at that point (not mad at him, of course), that I just sent him away with that message.  [Looking at the spots later showed that a VE3 spotted me as P40Y at 2340Z.  Although the spot was corrected by a W2 one minute later, there still ensued about 10 minutes of dupes.]

The contest ends at 2359Z, with 3270 Qs (excluding dupes) by 34 zones and 127 countries for a claimed score of 1,579,410 points in 28 hours of operating. Crovelli calls and I volunteer to pick him up, on the assumption that he will be in worse shape than we are, but when we go out to the car, the lights had been left on and it won’t start.  So he drives by and takes us to Tony Roma’s, where we have good ribs (first time I’ve ever had their ribs), and a chicken salad for Holly.  We are joined by Lisandro, Lissette, Allen, and their friend Dennis.  I drop John off then drive his car to our house so I can use it to take Holly to the airport, since we need to be at the airport at about 6 a.m.  Lisandro kindly drops off a set of jumper cables.

Monday, November 27, 2007. Left the house at 5:45 a.m. in John’s rented car for the airport.  There was no traffic, but already a short line at the AA counter for the 8:05 plane to Miami.  It was sad to see Holly go, as she had added immeasurably to my enjoyment of the trip, not to mention completely captivating the Arubans.  As soon as I left the airport, the heavens opened up with yet another squall, and I got wet in doing a dumpster run to dispose of some extra boxes and also just getting back into the house.  It didn’t matter much, as I immediately took my clothes off to go back to bed for two hours.

In a break between rain squalls, I tried the car again, and it barely did start.  So I drove around for about a half hour to put a charge into the battery, including leaving a QSL card note at Emily’s (I’d tried several times to reach her, unsuccessfully, by phone).  Also got gas.  Returned John’s car, and received back the 87A and power supply.  The rest of the day was spent in station activities.  After talking to John Fore, I went out between squalls and tried to document the towers and guys, taking pictures and dictating information on the guy construction, etc., also making distance measurements of the layout of the three towers and the five guy points.  Also took out the K3, reinstated the left Pro2, hooked up zillions of cables, and generally satisfied myself that everything worked OK.  We had had reports of troubles with the right radio, but everything seemed to be working OK.  It’s easy to be misled, however, unless all the cabling is carefully checked. 

I called Ken Anderson, K6TA, and found he was arriving the next day. I had already bagged the beverage ends (after labeling them) and put them outside, so I just unplugged the main 117 volt line and the amps, but left all the antennas connected. 

This consumed the entire day, leading to a final, late afternoon, run, then dinner of some more sandwiches.  Went over to JP’s to discuss finances with Chris and the antenna project with JP for about an hour, then to L & L’s to chat and also discuss materials needed for the project and to get Lisandro’s recommendations.  Back home at 10:30 p.m. or so to pack then to bed at midnight.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007.  I was taking the same plane as Holly, and John Crovelli kindly offered to take me to the airport, leaving at the same unholy hour of 5:45.  After an almost 5-hour layover in the MIA Admirals’ Club, arrived in SFO at about 6:30 p.m, picked up the car at Anza Parking, and was home in time for a late dinner.  Tom, W2SC, was on the plane coming back from 8P5A, as were Trey, N5KO, and Steve, K6AW, returning from HC8N.   Long day.