[EIDXA] PJ2 Travel Update

[reheinri at rockwellcollins.com]

This winter has just been too long!!!

Here's an update of the plans for the trip to Curacao for the ARRL DX CW 
Weekend.

I am scheduled to leave on Sunday, February 10 and arrive in Monday the 
11th mid-afternoon.  I decided to split the trip into two halves to hedge 
my bets with the all the travel delays that potentially exist.  I chose to 
use some of my hotel stay points in Miami for the overnight.  The earliest 
you will see me on the bands would be Monday evening, probably on either 
80 or 160 as I warm my self up from a couple of month reprieve since the 
last real contest activity was for CQWW CW in November.

If you want to check in and watch the action, go to the PJ2T website - 
www.pj2t.org - and select the webcam.  It updates every 5 minutes while 
someone is there.  Most of the time the camera is aimed outside just to 
depress the masses with the sunny view of the central Atlantic Ocean. 
During the evenings and during the contest the camera is aimed inside to 
monitor the action.

I expect that there will be setup and clean up projects during the days 
that are just necessary to keep a contest station in good working order as 
well as to keep the grounds manicured.  This time the team has rented a 
neighboring house for the overflow to help keep costs at bay.  I'll let 
you know when I return, but this could be the least expensive operation 
you could imagine!

I've captured a few requests for WARC band countries and will try to honor 
those.  I will try to use the EIDXA mailing list to let you know about 
propagation and when I am planning to be on.  For a contest effort like 
this, the WARC activity is minimum because you are wringing out the 
station and everything before the weekend.  Additionally, you are checking 
in with the competition to get a perspective of their observations as 
well.  Once the contest starts its man-to-man, but before the information 
exchange is amazing.

The conditions will likely be quite strange at this point in the sunspot 
cycle.  For any of you that participated in the CQWW DX contests you noted 
that 40M sounded like 20M quite early where establishing a run was 
difficult.  This will work in our favor since we expect that when the 
bands close to Europe, the antennas and ears will turn south and that is 
our advantage.  We will keep a watchful eye on 10M both by listening to 
the beacons, but also using the MUF tools on a computer as well.  We'll 
take any and all comers on 10M at any time - you never know if the band 
will open again or if it will be silent.

10M can be quite strange as well.  I have personally experienced listening 
to a neighboring station run 'em while I could not hear anything and vice 
versa.  That is one of the reasons we use the MUF tool to track the 
movement of the ionospheric "cloud".  Maybe I'll offer more of that at the 
April club meeting.

I also expect that 160 and 80 will get a lot of action too.  So if you 
want or need PJ2 on the low bands, we will hear you!  We have a 1000 foot 
beverage to the US and will likely have a pennant or a couple of other low 
band receive antennas.

We'll have seven ops, including Jim W0NB, but haven't decided on the class 
of entry yet.  It looks like the M/2 class will be the hot category this 
year from what I can find on NG3K and other websites.  There should be 
some good teams on from PJ4 (Bonaire) 6Y1V, CT9L, and others.

So throw a log on the fire to keep warm, turn on the radio, point the 
antennas to about 140 degrees and give us a call.  I'll be back on the 
19th - hopefully thawed out.

Rick N0YY