Background

I relocated in March to Orlando Florida when I accepted a promotion within my company. Prior to that I had spent all of my life in the Dallas Fort Worth area. During the last several years I had realized my dream of having my own station with multiple towers. You can see a description of my station with pictures on my website www.qsl.net/wq5w. I sold the house/station in August and saw all of the towers come down (a sad sight to any ham). Florida has been great but I am in an apartment until at least May of next year so I have only been able to operate portable the last few months. I really miss the big station, especially contesting and DXing!

As my new position takes me to Puerto Rico and the USVI frequently on business I got the idea to possibly combine one of my trips with a contest operation this fall. I first started looking at places to operate in KP4, KP2 or VP2V but found nothing that combined a good location with a reasonable price. Also, all of the big stations had already been reserved or were no longer available for rental (Windwood, USVI for example). I then looked at other Caribbean rental locations and found the Sand Dollar Villa in Abaco, Bahamas, Sea Cliff Cottages in Dominica and the V26B superstation in Antigua were the best available.

I have operated from the Caribbean/Central America 3 times; VP2MW and VP2M/WQ5W from Montserrat in 1988 (when I was 19), ZF2TG in 1992 from Little Cayman Island and as V31RR from Belize in 2004. All of these were “rent-a-stations” with all of the antennas and rigs already in place. Of the 3 places I chose for this fall only V26B has all of the antennas and rigs already in place. Sand Dollar Villa in the Bahamas has a couple of verticals in place and a power supply/tool-kit, Sea Cliff Cottages in Dominica will require me to bring everything.

I chose to go to the Bahamas for the first contest of the season as the location will be a good “practice” operation for the next trip to Dominica for CQWW CW. The Bahamas operation will require less setup and less things to take than Dominica but hopefully will give me good experience. I also chose the Bahamas first because although I seem to do very well in phone contests, phone is not my favorite mode. If I screw things up in the Bahamas it’s OK because it’s only phone (my apologies to any serious phone ops). The CW trip is serious so I want to make my mistakes in the Bahamas if I make them. The Antigua trip is a purely contesting trip in conjunction with a business trip to Puerto Rico. I will fly in on Thursday evening from San Juan and return to San Juan immediately following the contest Sunday.

That said, I still have goals for the C6 trip. I chose to operate 40M single band because it will require less operating time on my part (this is a vacation after all), it is one of my favorite bands and 40M is probably the best place to be during the bottom of the sunspot cycle without having to erect huge antennas. Also, I hold the NA record for CQWW CW as ZF2TG in 1992 so having that and the NA record low power record for CQWW SSB simultaneously would be a great feat. Yes, I know 40M SSB is not nearly as nice as 40M CW to operate but it will be a good learning experience if nothing else.

During the Dominica trip I hope to beat my own NA record for 40M CW. Again, that’s going to be a huge challenge as I will be operating low power and I set the record running about 800W high power from the Caymans and had a 2 element beam. I would at least like to set the low power record. We shall see.

Antigua should be fun as I think the location and station gives me a realistic chance to win. I haven’t decided if I want to go low or high power. I will make that decision as we get closer to contest and I see how the competitive landscape shapes up.