P40L-P49Y Contest Summary Information

Pre-contest:

Plans for this trip broadly speaking were two-fold: a week for CQ WPX ssb followed by 10 days assisting Jean-Pierre, P43A, with painting the towers and doing various yard clean-up, including removing a diseased ficus tree and another whose roots were damaging the cottage foundation, removing branches encroaching on tower guy lines and the cottage roof and removing some of the large, prickly cactus-like trees around the periphery of the clearing we’ve created in the Cunucu behind our property (especially the ones beginning the interfere with the lower leg of the 160 “double L”). My 34 year-old son, Mischa (short for Michael), came along to assist with some of the heavy lifting.

Our trip from San Francisco to Aruba via Miami was uneventful, departing just before mid-night on Monday and arriving in Aruba shortly before noon. The x-ray machines in customs were running but not in use. I was bringing several items for Lissete, (Lisandro’s, P43L, wife) and Cris, as well as a cordless mini-chainsaw I gotten on Amazon to add to our cottage tool collection for tree work, so it was a relief to not have to go through the rigamarole of explaining any of that.

By Thursday, the station was fully set up and configured for WPX ssb and Mischa and I had cut-down the two ficus trees and removed all of the cuttings to the other side of the wall between us and the Cunucu, where Cris had arranged for “Roy” to load it in his pick-up and take it to the dump. Roy would eventually end up taking 8 or 9 loads to the dump as we continued to add to the piles over the ensuing week.

I usually don’t bother with an SO2R set-up since I generally am organizing a M-S or M2 effort (in 48-hour contests), or operating in the LP category (in WPX contests). My mult totals in the prior two LP efforts in this contest were on the low side, and I thought I might try to improve them by actively using a second radio, so I took the time to pullout the DXDoubler and set-up for SO2R (which I ended up not using, see below). For some reason, my Bose headset with the added boom microphone would not work properly through the DXDoubler (bad feedback), so I had to revert to using one of the trusty old Yamaha C500 headsets.

The contest:

I debated entering the LP vs the HP category this time in light of the disturbed conditions. In fact, conditions were much more challenging this time from here and my QSO total reflects that, down by almost a third relative to two years ago.

At the beginning of the contest, I was considering starting on 15 which was still very much open and active (and turned out to have strong openings into Asia almost until midnight). But about 10 minutes before the start, I suddenly had very strong (like 80dB), across-the-band interference. It turned out to be JP, P43A, getting ready for his excellent single band effort. I texted JP and we ran some quick tests but all seemed good on his side and we never figured out the cause. The signature of the interference on the P3 was like arcing or, alternatively, what you see when a front-end protector is overloaded by a strong signal. The problem was gone by Saturday morning and, as usual, I could operate within 5-10kHz of JP’s strong HP signal on 15 even though he is only 1km away. But it kept me off 15 Friday night (and caused me to give up any thought of using a second radio).

It also threw off my start a bit. Nevertheless, I was able to get a run going on 20 for a while despite being LP. But once the initial pile-up had been worked through, I really wished I could go to 15 which was still experiencing an excellent opening to Asia. Instead, the only option was 40, which turned out to be tough going, and so the remainder of Friday night was challenging as watched my rates and QSO totals fell significantly behind my last two LP efforts in this contest.

The last two times I entered this contest in the LP category I was surprised how loud I felt on 10 and 15, and even 20 most of the time (as contrasted with the lower bands where additional power always makes a big difference). That was not the case this time.

Conditions continued to be mixed throughout the weekend. 10 and 15 meters opened much later and, in general, were unstable. 10 meters was very good much of the day. 15 not so much.

On 15, it was frustrating to hear neighboring station P43A consistently running stations HP. During those same periods, try as I might, I usually could not get anything going, often CQing for 10 or more minutes with no results.

I ended up needing to spend much more time tuning around and jumping on spots instead of running. Not a good feeling as I continued to fall behind prior rates.

Despite the challenges, and in some ways because of them, I again greatly enjoyed (most of the time) the simplicity of the LP category.

I was reporting on the Contesting Online Scoreboard and monitoring others throughout the contest. It was fun, and motivating, to see how others were doing. By the end of the contest, my QSO total was down about 30% from my last effort, but likely sufficient to clinch another first in the SOLP category.

A common challenge for us here in P4 are the frequency conflicts that develop between us and SAm stations that open up on or near our frequency. They often cannot hear us with our yagis pointing north, especially when we're LP. I was very impressed how uniformly considerate these stations were when I took the time to let them know of my presence and request a move.

Post contest:

Early Monday after the contest, JARA delivered a 66’ JLG manlift and JP, who had taken a week off from work for the project, showed up to start working on the towers. Cris had purchased supplies from Kooyman. JP proposed to give the towers the same treatment as he uses on his masts and our gates: 1) remove rust using a grinder with a stiff rotary brush; 2) coat surfaces with OSPHO (stops rust and prepares surfaces for painting); 3) wipe off film resulting from OSPHO treatment; 4) apply one coat of primer; and 5) finish off with two coats of white enamel(Super Spec Urethane Alkyd Gloss Enamel).

The plan was for JP to do the work in the lift, with me providing ground support and, between tasks, continuing my tree and bush cutting efforts.

We had been monitoring winds throughout the prior week and were concerned because they had been consistently strong, varying from 22-26 mph sustained with gusts from 30-36 mph. That’s too much wind for comfort working 60’ in the air in a manlift basket. On Monday and Tuesday, the winds were a bit less and great progress was made on the top 15’ feet of the big Rohn 45 tower. After that, though, for the ensuing six days, the winds were a big challenge and impeded progress. After 8 days of significant effort, ~95% of the big tower was completed (everything other than the areas just above and below the guy points) and we’d replace 4 of the 6 dead-end preforms at the tower end of the guys (one at the top guy point and all three at the lower guy point). JP thought he would be able to complete the last 5% of the big tower in the ensuing weeks climbing with a harness. But the two Rohn 25 towers still need to be painted to extend their lives, ideally within the next 12 months (they are in a bit better condition than the big Rohn 45 tower).

One takeaway from this experience is that we must schedule future work for periods when winds are likely to be lighter. The trade winds are pretty consistent throughout the year, though. Wind speed averages tend to be lowest in the Fall, but that is also the wettest period. JP suggests the best times are in the June and July months when lulls often occur as storm systems pass to the north. The scheduling challenge is complicated by the need to reserve an available manlift and coordinate with JPs work schedule.

Cris had recently flagged concerns about the state of our ~6’ cinderblock wall along the west side of the property, which had started to noticeably “tilt”. It didn’t seem terrible urgent, though; afterall, it was a big, strong wall. However, one afternoon in the middle of the tower painting, there’s was a big gust of wind accompanied by a sound like an earthquake. Turning around, we discovered that a 50-60’ section had completely collapsed. Fortunately, there were no damages or injuries and within a day, Cris had arranged for her tenant, “Popo”, to start work constructing a a much stronger version of the wall.

A bit over a month earlier, as we prepared for the ARRL DX CW contest, we discovered that the jumpers on the 10 meter yagi were failing as the result of the coax shields tearing where soldered to the shell of the PL259s (using the “K3LR method”) due to repeated bending as the antennas were rotated. Ed, W0YK, climbed the tower and implemented a temporary fix so the antenna could continue to be used pending a more permanent fix. An important action item for me for this trip was implementing a more dependable fix while we had the manlift on site. I used the manlift early (around 6:30am) on two mornings when the winds usually were a bit lighter. I repaired the jumpers and rearranged the loops so there should be no further bending force on the junctions. The rotator loops had worked their way off the top rotator plate and down around the tower exacerbating the forces on the coaxes (we may have left two much “play” in the loops when we put the antennas up in 2020) and my adjustment to the loops should address that problem. The same problem appeared to have developed at the top of the Rohn 45 tower and JP did his best to reorient the loops so that they remain above the rotator plate, but more work there eventually may be warranted.

73, John, W6LD/P40L