[KCDXC] FW: [3830] ARRLDX SSB PJ2T M/2 HP

[dr]

                    ARRL DX Contest, SSB

Call: PJ2T
Operator(s): WB9Z, WE9V, W9JUV, NW0L, W0CG, KB0VVT, KG0US, KG0UT
Station: PJ2T

Class: M/2 HP
QTH: Netherlands Antilles
Operating Time (hrs): 48

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:  409    52
   80: 1020    59
   40: 1979    59
   20: 2503    60
   15: 3047    59
   10:  503    45
-------------------
Total: 9461   334  Total Score = 9,479,922

Club: Caribbean Contesting Consortium

Comments:

A first at PJ2T: At times during the contest both signals from our Multi/2
were YL voices.  It was a privilege to welcome 17 year old Rebecca Rich,
KB0VVT and her parents KG0US and KG0UT to PJ2T.  Rebecca is the 2004 Hiram
Percy Maxim Award winner, was licensed in Extra Class at age 8, carries a
4.0 grade average, is President of NHS, and will be off to college soon,
planning to stay straight through a Ph.D.

If you heard her on the air before or during the ARRL SSB contest, you know
she's an incredibly accomplished operator in both modes.  Prior to the
contest she ran over 1000 QSOs, picking callsigns out of huge pileups on 40
CW (and elsewhere) at 35 WPM++ with speed and accuracy.  And she's as good a
contest operator as we've ever seen here, maintaining very high rates
concurrent with total situational awareness, passing mults and Qs and
snagging ops for skeds on the low bands.  At times Rebecca was on one
station and her mom (Barb) on the other.  Dad Dave, KB0US also put in many
hours in the contest.  We're glad to have been able to participate in
Rebecca's first operation from the DX side and hope she will be able to
return to Curacao.

We're also happy to welcome Chad, WE9V to PJ2T.  He needs no introduction to
the contest community, and in a wild coincidence we looked back through the
old logs and found that WE9V was the 7th QSO ever made with the PJ2T
callsign in our first operation in November of 2000.  It was a pleasure to
have him here.  In addition, Joe, W9JUV, a member of our CCC contest club,
was here for his first venture into industrial-strength contesting.  Very
high on the honor roll and often the last guy standing in the countdown at
the Dayton DX Dinner, Joe has 58 years on Rebecca.  It's a privilege to have
had such a mix of ham resumes and a wide range of experience on the team for
this operation.

The first night was the usual disappointment, with only about 40 minutes of
productivity out of 20 meters.  We parked on 40 for the night and jogged the
other station back and forth between 75 and 160.  We thought 160 was bad the
first night, but it was cake compared to the second night, when we listened
most of the night to 20 dB over S9 noise on all the Beverages and one flag.
Ugh.  Apologies to all of the guys who met our sked on Saturday night at
0300Z only to find us deaf from the tropical QRN.

After surviving the agonies of the first night, the high bands paid us back
for the suffering.  We started on 21.303 Saturday morning and owned that
frequency all day, making over 2000 QSOs.  Lurking for the 10 meter opening
paid off with a short but rewarding burst of activity centered on the 2100Z
hour.  The second night we went nuts looking for normally easy mults on 160
such as SC, CO, VE2 and others, never finding most.  The 40 meter ops
patiently pounded and pounded both nights, never with good rates and always
with the frustration of splits, broadcasters, and dodging other callers on
our listening frequency, but the patience paid off with nearly 2000 QSOs.
VE9 turned out to be the most elusive of the realistically possible mults
this weekend.  Thanks to VY1MB who shocked us by ringing in on 20 for an
unexpected 'dream' multiplier.

Sunday afternoon 10 opened ever so slightly, with NW0L fortunate to be in
the chair at Station # 1 at the right time.  Marty did a superb job of
harvesting points and mults at breakneck speeds, quickly adding about 20
mults to Saturday's total, and running the rate meter up over 400/hour at
times.  He's as good as anyone you've ever heard ? need for speed.  10 was
entertaining in that the opening came in bursts, with no particular
geographical pattern.  At one point we even specifically asked for 1's only
because we were chronically short of New England mults.  The boxes turned
purple very fast in the W1 call area and we quickly moved on.

We had the usual burst of high rates in the final couple of hours with
Europe gone on the high bands and U.S. beams turned toward the Caribbean.
WE9V closed on 20 and KB0VVT on 15 with composite rates of about 360/hour
the last two hours.

No persistent hardware problems all weekend ? Writelog held up solidly and
we were practically in heaven having just gotten ADSL at PJ2T.  The speed
and connectivity are excellent, and NW0L installed a router so that we could
web surf wirelessly outside, even providing wireless Internet access to our
next door neighbor.  No more spastic dial-up and no more guilt over the old
$3/hour timed charges for Internet access via Curacao dialups.
Telecommunication competition and deregulation on Curacao have done great
things in the last three years.  We even have digital U.S. TV programming
now.  All of the off-season maintenance work we do here paid off.  Big
thanks to Station Manager Jeff, K8ND, for all his time and efforts to make
things work here.  When we need 1.75 amp slow blow fuses for the Alpha
linear step-start circuit, they're here on the shelf, in quantity, thanks to
Jeff.

Many thanks to NW0L for arranging and coordinating our crew, and to WB9Z,
W9JUV, WE9V, KB0VVT, KG0US, and KG0UT for making the trip.  And as always
special thanks to Cindy, W0CG's XYL, without whose blessing none of this
would be happening.

Thanks to everyone for the PJ2T QSOs and the super friendships we've made
through contesting.

     For the PJ2T Crew,

            - Geoff, W0CG, PJ2DX