P40L-P49Y Contest Summary Information

Comments:

Mother Nature nearly prevented me from making it to Aruba for this contest.  The normal harvest period for my Pinot Noir vineyard is early September, but this year the last full day of harvest ended up being just prior to our 6am flight the next day.  I was exhausted getting on the plane and thankfully I had planned to do an M2 this time with K6AW and W6OTC.  Despite depressed band conditions, we are pleased with our effort effort from Aruba.  It was fun to extend my normal SO2R configuration to Multi-Two.  The three of us entered this category from HC8N in 2007, and decided to try it from this more modest station.

Although the details differ, the overall results above are similar to what has been achieved in recent years from HC8N in this contest.  We were, of course, disappointed in the ten-meter numbers.  Mid-week, the band opened to the US late in the day but the subsequent solar disturbance kept the band closed until Sunday when it simply teased us with a very few contacts.  We listened on 10 meters for hours and gave it every chance possible on Sunday but we could hear very little to work.  Another disappointment was 80 meters where yours truly probably left another 100 QSOs on the band.  The conditions on both 40 and 80 were challenging, with most signals just below the decoder's threshold and sounding very hollow and mushy with lots of QSB.  We changed AGC and MMTTY decoder algorithms with little relief.  This, coupled with my fatigue, resulted in less than sterling numbers.  I was fine on the higher bands, but the tough conditions on 80 were more than I had energy to deal with!

Thanks to John, P40L (W6LD), and Andy, P49Y (AE6Y), for use of their station.

Also, thanks to local managers and friends J-P, P43A, and his wife Chris, P43C.  Finally, I had a ball this weekend with Steve and Glenn!

Ed - W0YK/P49X