At Septembers meeting we were entertained by Roger, G4BVY, who is very well known in contesting circles and headlined his talk as one not having any equations in it! His trip to Suriname operating as PZ5K which, of course, we all knew to be at the top end of South America, was their location for the CQ WW SSB Contest.
Having rented a ‘Shack’ from a guy they had never met, at a place they had never seen added quite a lot of risk to the venture. However, the whole experience turned out to be very successful, especially when the shack comes with two multiband beams on two large lattice towers in a 400m x 80m plot. In addition, they also had 80m dipole, 160m ‘T’, a Beverage and a Butternut vertical and some big amplifiers to play with. Their logging programme (not Roger’s favourite) was ‘Win-Test’.
Roger described the interesting collection of boxes from the weighty hand luggage linking the aerials to provide diversity operation. They had the pleasure of W6s in the left ear and W1s in the right! Quite a lot of analysis on good QTHs to maximise contest points had preceded the trip. Certain spots in the world work consistently well, although PZ did rely on double hop propagation quite a bit. They came creditable 6th.
My highlight of Roger’s talk was the 100 seconds recording of the contest station on 15m working US stations at a rate of 320/hour. The calm efficiency and relentless attention to keeping each contact to the minimum time was fascinating to hear.
So, for about $1000/person, they enjoyed full board and lodgings, a shack and an aerial farm. A return visit is on the cards.
Report by G4ENA