Looks like I caught the last American flight out of Abaco until maybe Friday. Bahamas Air had already cancelled all of their flights out. The plane ended up being full since they waited to let as many people on as possible and therefore took off about 30 minutes late. The flight from Abaco to Miami was surprisingly smooth but I wouldn’t have wanted to be on the ocean below as there were whitecaps everywhere. The report I read this morning said the seas were 15-20 feet high in the passage to Florida (yikes!).
Due to the slow hell that is MIA I missed my connecting flight back to Orlando but I was able to get on the next one a couple of hours later.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Goodbye Abaco
Sunny and not a cloud in the sky this morning. However, the forecast above now has the eye of Noel passsing directly over Abaco late Wednesday/early Thursday. Also it may strengthen into a hurricane. What was an inconvenience issue may become a safety issue so I'm getting out today. Airline reservation changed, bags packed and the cab will pick me up at 11 A.M. I should be back in Orlando this evening.
Monday, October 29, 2007
OK Noel, you win
The latest forecast track puts Noel even closer to Abaco. Notice on the map that it will be tracking right between where I have to fly (Abaco to Miami, then connecting back home to Orlando) beginning Tuesday night and passing very near Abaco on Thursday. That means the one Abaco to Miami flight on AA is likely to be cancelled Wednesday and Thursday. I have to be back in the office on Friday so it appears that my only shot to get back home is to take the flight back tomorrow. So unless the forecast changes dramatically overnight, that's exactly what I'm going to do.
I took down the 20M loop this evening and pretty much everything is packed and ready to go.
I sure wish I would have had the chance to explore this place and do some snorkelling and fishing but I guess that will have to wait until I can return.
Today
Today's been a productive day. I disassembled the 20M inverted vee near the beach and rolled up the 3 100' rolls of RG8X coax. I also got everything packed back in the golf case. The only thing I left standing of mine is the 20M delta loop on top of the Spiderbeam mast lashed to the coconut tree with a 100' RG8X section back to the rig. I left that up mainly to listen to the Hurricane net on 14.300.
I figure if Noel requires, I can disassemble the loop and mast, roll up the coax and have everything else packed and ready to leave within an hour.
I am now officially in vacation mode. I expect to do very little radio operating from this point forward.
For lunch today I decided to go to the beach bar shown in the guidebook for the villa. It was supposed to have great hamburgers and was a 10 minute walk to the west on the beach. After 15 minutes of walking west on the beach I found nothing. I suppose it was closed for the season (this place is dead by the way-I have the beach all to myself but the sea is pretty rough today) so I headed back to the villa. I stopped by the Marina and talked to a guy who can take me snorkelling or fishing tomorrow if the sea isn't too bad and I don't have to leave due to Noel. He told me about a beach bar right across the street that served lunch, about a 2 minute walk from the villa to the EAST. I proceeded to walk over there and enjoyed a great $8 cheeseburger and fries along with a Bahamas Mash that was composed heavily of Rum. All of this overlooking a beautiful beach with sand and water that I've never seen more beautiful.
All in all a great day so far.
I figure if Noel requires, I can disassemble the loop and mast, roll up the coax and have everything else packed and ready to leave within an hour.
I am now officially in vacation mode. I expect to do very little radio operating from this point forward.
For lunch today I decided to go to the beach bar shown in the guidebook for the villa. It was supposed to have great hamburgers and was a 10 minute walk to the west on the beach. After 15 minutes of walking west on the beach I found nothing. I suppose it was closed for the season (this place is dead by the way-I have the beach all to myself but the sea is pretty rough today) so I headed back to the villa. I stopped by the Marina and talked to a guy who can take me snorkelling or fishing tomorrow if the sea isn't too bad and I don't have to leave due to Noel. He told me about a beach bar right across the street that served lunch, about a 2 minute walk from the villa to the EAST. I proceeded to walk over there and enjoyed a great $8 cheeseburger and fries along with a Bahamas Mash that was composed heavily of Rum. All of this overlooking a beautiful beach with sand and water that I've never seen more beautiful.
All in all a great day so far.
Who is this guy Noel and why is he trying to ruin my vacation?
This doesn't look good. Today's a beautiful day on the island but if this forecast holds it's about to get ugly. I'm supposed to leave Thursday afternoon but may have to get the heck out of Dodge tomorrow or Wednesday. I'll probably have to make a decision on that in the next 12 hours.
Contest Report
The contest started off promising, I ran 91 stations the first hour and 84 the second hour almost all U.S./VE. When the band died at around 0500Z I had 269 QSO's in the log with 6 countries and 6 zones. All of this was on the delta loop as the inverted vee was a few S units down on most signals from the states.
I woke up around 1030Z Saturday morning and that was just about the right time as the band was just starting to open. I worked my first QSO @ 10:55Z, DR1A from Germany. It was soon after this that I discovered what was to be my achilles heal in this contest-Europe. Most European stations were S-9 or above on the loop but could not hear me. The inverted vee I put up on the porch was no better. I called and called many stations without even a hint of them hearing me. It was incredibly frustrating to the point I rechecked the SWR and resonant frequencies of both antennas with the SWR Analyzer thinking something must be wrong. Unfortunately nothing was wrong-the antennas were just not performing to EU. I did manage to work a lot of mults in the Caribbean and South America with the inverted vee and even a few loud stations in EU after many calls over the nest couple of hours. The frustration mounted to the point that I had to do something. I decided to scout out a new location closer to the beach for the inverted vee. About 300 feet away across the road near the tennis courts was a location that had a clear view to the water about 250 feet or so from the beach. I then proceeded to move the inverted vee with the Buddipole portable mast to this location and strung 3 of my 100' RG8X sections together back to the Villa. I oriented it broadside NE/SW and guyed it off to keep it standing in the face of the constant 20-25MPH sea breeze. Here is a picture of it with the sea in the far background:
This little project cost me about 1 1/2 hours and I was back on @ 1535Z working SP3HRN for a new country mult. The new antenna was a definite improvement but didn't solve the EU problem. I only had to call stations 4 or 5 times now instead of 10-15 to get their attention. It also seemed to work best for Caribbean and South American stations so it became my main antenna during the daylight hours.
Still I had no ability to run EU. I tried many times in the EU subband (14.100-14.150) to get something going but never could. I also couldn't run stateside during the day at any decent rate due to 2 factors:
1. Most of them were pointing at EU
2. 20M was a war zone during the day with no clear frequencies.
My 100W had no chance of holding a frequency for any length of time.
Having run out of options I decided to search and pounce and go for multipliers. This seemed to be fairly successful as my country and zone count improved considerably.
I did manage to run a few U.S. stations Saturday evening after EU died out but still, I ended the day with only 414 Q's in the log-145 more than I ended with the night before. The last QSO in the log Saturday was PS2T at 0108Z.
Sunday was no better for rate, maybe even a little worse as I ended the contest with 543 QSO's. It got so bad I took a 2 hour nap around noon on Sunday. I had to work hard for every multiplier and ended up with 100 of them (79 countries/21 zones). Almost all of these were in NA and EU. I managed to work a couple of African stations (c50C and 6W1RY) and both VK and ZL. Asia was a bust as I didn't work any JA's or anything else for that matter. I did manage to work KL7RA and a couple of KH6's. I even missed CE and zone 13. The one highlight of Sunday was stringing together about a 20 minute run late in the afternoon including having a couple of EU stations call me (the only time during the contest that happened).
Final result: 543 QSO's/1201 points, 79 countries, 21 zones = 120, 100 points.
All in all I turned in a great single band score....if that band were 160M, for 20M not that hot.
For what it's worth, I managed to beat the old C6 20M LP record (set by C6ALZ in 2003) by abut 60K points. The overall C6 record of 327K points, held by VP7NS since 1973 (wow!) is quite safe for at least another year.
I woke up around 1030Z Saturday morning and that was just about the right time as the band was just starting to open. I worked my first QSO @ 10:55Z, DR1A from Germany. It was soon after this that I discovered what was to be my achilles heal in this contest-Europe. Most European stations were S-9 or above on the loop but could not hear me. The inverted vee I put up on the porch was no better. I called and called many stations without even a hint of them hearing me. It was incredibly frustrating to the point I rechecked the SWR and resonant frequencies of both antennas with the SWR Analyzer thinking something must be wrong. Unfortunately nothing was wrong-the antennas were just not performing to EU. I did manage to work a lot of mults in the Caribbean and South America with the inverted vee and even a few loud stations in EU after many calls over the nest couple of hours. The frustration mounted to the point that I had to do something. I decided to scout out a new location closer to the beach for the inverted vee. About 300 feet away across the road near the tennis courts was a location that had a clear view to the water about 250 feet or so from the beach. I then proceeded to move the inverted vee with the Buddipole portable mast to this location and strung 3 of my 100' RG8X sections together back to the Villa. I oriented it broadside NE/SW and guyed it off to keep it standing in the face of the constant 20-25MPH sea breeze. Here is a picture of it with the sea in the far background:
This little project cost me about 1 1/2 hours and I was back on @ 1535Z working SP3HRN for a new country mult. The new antenna was a definite improvement but didn't solve the EU problem. I only had to call stations 4 or 5 times now instead of 10-15 to get their attention. It also seemed to work best for Caribbean and South American stations so it became my main antenna during the daylight hours.
Still I had no ability to run EU. I tried many times in the EU subband (14.100-14.150) to get something going but never could. I also couldn't run stateside during the day at any decent rate due to 2 factors:
1. Most of them were pointing at EU
2. 20M was a war zone during the day with no clear frequencies.
My 100W had no chance of holding a frequency for any length of time.
Having run out of options I decided to search and pounce and go for multipliers. This seemed to be fairly successful as my country and zone count improved considerably.
I did manage to run a few U.S. stations Saturday evening after EU died out but still, I ended the day with only 414 Q's in the log-145 more than I ended with the night before. The last QSO in the log Saturday was PS2T at 0108Z.
Sunday was no better for rate, maybe even a little worse as I ended the contest with 543 QSO's. It got so bad I took a 2 hour nap around noon on Sunday. I had to work hard for every multiplier and ended up with 100 of them (79 countries/21 zones). Almost all of these were in NA and EU. I managed to work a couple of African stations (c50C and 6W1RY) and both VK and ZL. Asia was a bust as I didn't work any JA's or anything else for that matter. I did manage to work KL7RA and a couple of KH6's. I even missed CE and zone 13. The one highlight of Sunday was stringing together about a 20 minute run late in the afternoon including having a couple of EU stations call me (the only time during the contest that happened).
Final result: 543 QSO's/1201 points, 79 countries, 21 zones = 120, 100 points.
All in all I turned in a great single band score....if that band were 160M, for 20M not that hot.
For what it's worth, I managed to beat the old C6 20M LP record (set by C6ALZ in 2003) by abut 60K points. The overall C6 record of 327K points, held by VP7NS since 1973 (wow!) is quite safe for at least another year.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Disappointed
Overall a very disappointing result: 543 QSO's, 79 countries, 21 zones = 120,100 points I'll post a complete recap tomorrow.
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