DOMINICA CQWW 2004
J75J
CQWW 2004 From Dominica, the Nature Isle of the Caribbean, Déjà Vu
The members of the Florida Dxpedition Group, or FDXPG, had been planning a really rare and exotic effort for CQWW SSB 2004. One which had not been done before, and we really wanted to pull it off. We had worked for several months in putting together a trip to Cuba for the CQWW. Helping us in this was Oscar CO2OJ, who is a member of the FRC. We had obtained the sponsorship of the FRC, or Federacion Radioafficianodos de Cuba to travel to Havana, Cuba to operate in a CQWW SSB effort in conjunction with the FRC. We were even going to be issued a special T48 call for use during the contest. Lodging, meals, and transportation had also been arranged. We had applied to the U.S. Treasury Dept. Office of Foreign Assets Control for a special license to travel to Cuba. Everything was going well until June of 2004 when the Bush Administration decided to tighten up its policy on travel to Cuba by U S Citizens. We then received a letter from the Treasury Dept. in which our request was denied as not being consistent with current policy. To say the least we were very disappointed indeed. Now the question was, what do we do for the CQWW? After the grueling trip to San Andres Island for CQWW 2003, which entailed a 14-hour layover at the El Dorado International airport in Bogotá, we were becoming more and more interested in a laid back effort at an easy to get to relaxed location. One place came to mind right away. Dominica! We had put on an effort there in 2001 and had a real ball and had a very relaxing time while there. It was unanimous; we would try for Dominica for CQWW 2004. Bill W4WX Dxpedition leader and President of the FDXPG fired off a quick email to Jude, manager of Picard’s Beach resort in Portsmouth, Dominica to check on the availability of 2 beach cottages during the CQWW in October of 2004. He got a quick reply stating that the cottages we wanted were indeed available, as October is off-season there. Four members of the FDXPG signed on and we reserved 2 cottages. The members going to Dominica were Bill W4WX, Clarence W9AAZ, Larry W1LR, and Cory N1WON. Bill W4WX then contacted Mr. George James of the NTRC who issues amateur radio License’s for the Commonwealth of Dominica. Mr. James advised there would be no problem at all as we all had valid US extra class tickets. The cost for our Dominican license’s would each be $70.08 EC , or East Caribbean dollars, which is $27.00 USD. Three of us got the same calls we had in 2001, Bill W4WX got J75WX, Larry W1LR got J79LR, and I got my old call of J79AA back. Cory who did not have a former Dominican call applied for and got J79CM. Mr. James was also kind enough to issue us a special call for use during the contest. We got a nice short and sweet call, J75J.
There was now only one step left to clinch our trip, airfare. I began searching the Internet for economical flights to Melville Hall International airport in Dominica. From past experience I knew that around the middle of July flights to the Caribbean usually go down in price. As usual this was once again the case, on July 12th the price dropped from almost $700.00 per person to $422.00 per person for a round trip ticket with one stop to change planes in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The four of us quickly purchased our tickets using Travelocity, which I found, had the lowest prices. We now had all our ducks in a row and CQWW 2004 SSB from Dominica the Nature Isle of the Caribbean was going to be a reality!
We were now a little over four months out before leaving for Dominica, and our trip leader Bill W4WX started to get things organized. He made up a list of who should bring what in the way of equipment. He knows what gear we all have so it’s easy for him to do this. We would be taking three Kenwood TS 570 HF transceivers. These are the de facto standard Dxpedition rigs of the FDXPG. Most of the club members own one. Also we would be traveling light and take a Force 12 Sigma 5 vertical antenna, a home-brew 30 and 40 meter vertical, an Alpha Delta sloper for the low bands, and a 2 element MQ1 Hybrid quad for 20-15-10-6 meters. We would also take a small 600-watt Amp Supply no tune amplifier, as well as other numerous small items of gear, tools, rope, etc., etc.
Soon it was almost time to leave for Dominica. We assembled at Bill W4WX’s house at 200am on the morning of October 26th and piled our gear and luggage into the back of two pickup trucks and headed for Orlando International airport to catch our flight to Dominica or J7 land. After we arrived at the airport and began checking in, the TSA or Transportation Safety Administration opened most of our checked bags after they x-rayed them. I can just imagine that four crazy hams along with our ample luggage, antennas, and radio gear looked suspicious to them, but after examining it, they repacked the bags and we were allowed to proceed without further incident. If you have never flown into Dominica the baggage rules can be kind of confusing. On the flight to Dominica you are allowed one carry on bag of 40 pounds, and also two checked bags of 70 pounds each. No Problem! However on the return flight from Dominica things change, you are now allowed one carry on bag of 40 pounds, and two checked bags with a total weight of 70 pounds for both. In other words your weight allowance on the return trip is cut in half on your checked in luggage. There is a large sign in the airport in Dominica stating this. If you are overweight on the outbound flight you are expected to abandon anything which causes you to be overweight. As the saying goes, to be forewarned is to be forearmed. We made sure all our check bags would weigh a total of 70 pounds total for both when we left Dominica for home. We then boarded a Boeing 757 and soon took off for the first leg of our destination, San Juan, Puerto Rico. After a smooth and uneventful flight in which we were served coffee and a granola bar we landed in SJU, or San Juan. We then had to walk from one end of the airport to the other for the final leg of the flight to Dominica. We checked in at the American Airlines desk and boarded a shuttle bus which took us to our plane bound for Dominica or DOM. The plane was a Super ATR 72 turbo prop. When you see one for the first time, you cannot help but think, “this thing will never get off the ground”. Never the less we boarded and crammed ourselves into the narrow seats and fastened our seat belts prior to take off. Soon the pilot had the two engines turning over and we taxied out to the runway. He then fire walled the throttle and we sped down towards the end of the runway and finally got into the air. The plane was full for the trip to Dominica. We climbed steadily and leveled off at 19,000 feet, and after about 2 hours the pilot announced we were getting close to Dominica. We then began our decent toward Melville Hall International airport. If you have never flown into this airport you are in for a real surprise. The pilot flies towards a mountain peak, and you are sure he is going to crash into it. At the last second he banks hard and almost stands the ATR 72 up on its wing, he then turns and levels out. Now you are descending through a valley between 2 mountains. As you look out the windows on both sides all you can see are palm trees whizzing by. You then drop fast and with a thump are on the tarmac which is only 3000 feet long with the Atlantic Ocean on the far end. The pilot then reverses the pitch of the props and throws out the anchor, and starts pumping the brakes to get stopped before he runs out of runway. The plane stopped right at the far and of the runway next to the ocean and when we did the passengers all started to cheer and clap! The Super ATR 72’s are used extensively in the Caribbean, and are a very agile aircraft which can land and take off on very short runways. We then taxied back to the terminal building and deplaned and went through immigration and customs. We then retrieved out luggage and discovered that one of the bags was missing. It was the bag with ALL of our coax for the antennas, now what? We checked with the terminal and they told us there was not room for all the bags on our flight and the rest would be coming in on the next flight in about an hour. So we had no choice but to wait. In the mean time we went outside and found our driver who was going to take our gear and us to Picard’s Beach Cottages on the other side of the island. We met up with Mr. Clement (Clem) James, J73CI. Clem is the unofficial ham radio ambassador for Dominica. He had our licenses from Mr. George James. If you need to know anything about ham radio in Dominica, Clem is the man to ask. In addition he maintains the islands great repeater system which has a north and south machine on 2 meters with a UHF link between them. I brought my little Yaesu VX5R HT and could easily work anywhere on the island with it. We sat around and chewed the rag while waiting for the next plane. We also had the pleasure of meeting three more Dominican hams, Mr. Lambert Charles J73LC, and Mr. Conrad Jederon J73CAJ, and a very pretty young lady, Sharmane Mark J73SHM. Soon the next flight landed and mercifully our missing bag of coax showed up. We all breathed a collective sigh of profound relief!
We then all got into Clem’s van and headed toward our home away from home for the next week, Picard’s Beach Cottage Resort located on Prince Rupert Bay, Portsmouth, Dominica. After an unforgettable drive of over an hour through tortuous mountain roads with endless switch-backs, and sheer cliffs we arrived in Portsmouth, Dominica and were soon settled in our cottages at Picard’s Beach Resort. We quickly changed to shorts T-shirts and sandals. We then started to assemble part of our antenna farm. We got the Sigma 5 vertical, and the 30/40-meter vertical up before it got dark. We then started to work the deserving all over the world with ease. Its amazing how well vertical antennas work when mounted close to salt water, and we were right on the beach with the verticals 25 feet from the ocean. We were getting 20 over S 9 reports from all over the world. As soon as this wore off I decided to hit the rack as it was now 10pm and I had been up since the previous day with little or no sleep. I barely remember my head hitting the pillow. I awoke at 4am and literally jumped out of bed. Thirty-meter CW would be open to the world! I quickly fired up one of the Kenwood TS 570’s and using the home-brew 30/40 vertical started calling CQ on 10.105 CW. I started to work guys right away all over the USA and had a few EU stations calling me also. Dominica is located in the Atlantic Standard Time zone, first light at this time of the year comes around 4:35am. Sure enough, at around 4:40am the band opened to Asia. I worked a bunch of JA’s. It is really a pleasure to work and log them; they are so polite and disciplined! That first morning I was even rewarded with a JT contact as well as one from T30, Kiribati. Man, this is really living, working CW on a wide-open band and having the world calling you, this is high adventure indeed! Predictably as soon as the sun started to peek above the horizon 30 meters went almost stone dead with only a few US stations still readable. Then I went to 15 meters where I found the band open to EU and logged over a hundred stations in short order. Bill, now J75WX stumbled in and I went QRT and put on a pot of coffee and got breakfast going for the group. The preparation of breakfast is one of the Dxpedition duties assigned to me. After a gourmet breakfast of strong black coffee, bacon, eggs, and toast, Bill J75WX and I walked into Portsmouth to the local grocery store to stock up on provisions. We then headed back to the cottages where all four of us assembled and erected the 4 band hybrid quad and Alpha Delta sloper. Now our antenna farm on the beach in Dominica was finished and we could spend the next week operating at will. Of course there was always the distraction of the beautiful black sand beach or sight seeing, but we all got in as much operating, as we wanted. Bill J75WX worked a lot of his favorite mode RTTY. Cory J79CM got on 6 meters and made some contacts. Larry J79LR got on his favorite mode PSK-31 and logged a bunch of contacts. I worked mostly CW.
On Wednesday evening after we all had a full day of pileups under our belts, Mother Nature treated us to a show. At 9:14pm a total eclipse of the moon began. When I say we were in the cat birds seat for it I am not exaggerating. The view from the pitch-dark beach with a clear sky was totally amazing; it was awesome to say the very least!
We had arrived on Tuesday and spent the next 3 days operating and creating pileups almost at will, it was really great. If you are a Dx’er you just have to experience the other end of a pile-up to believe it. One of our pet peeves was guys calling us with their speech processors cranked up. Believe me it is very difficult to try and get their call sign when their audio is so distorted and has so much splatter. Please guys turn off those processor and do everyone a favor! On Friday afternoon we all shut down and stopped operating. We then set up two stations that we would use in the CQWW. I took my TS 570 and stowed it in a closet until after the contest. We set up the two remaining stations and fed all the coax from all 4 antennas to them. We also set up an Amp Supply 600 watt no tune amplifier to use on the run station. We would be operating the CQWW as a high power multi-single entry. We would have liked to have a second amplifier on the multiplier station, but did not have enough weight allowance on the plane to allow us to pack one, so we would just have to do the best we could with what we had. All of us then sacked out for a nap before the contest. We all got up about an hour before the test and cooked supper out on the grill before the melee began. Bill J75WX had made up a schedule for us to operate during the CQWW, and I would start the test on 20 meters. Larry J79LR would be the first to man the multiplier station. Larry has been licensed for over 50 years, and at the age of 74 years young is still willing and able to wade into any kind of a pileup to work DX or a contest. My hat goes off to Larry! As the time for the contest to begin drew near I got on 20 meters to look for a clear spot, lots a luck! The band was jammed. I finally shoehorned into a frequency where the QRM was bearable, and then the clock on CT which was running on our laptop computers rolled over to 0000 Zulu and I called CQ contest from Japan 75 Japan. I got first blood right away, and logged our first QSO for CQWW 2004. I then continued calling and logging stations, and Larry found all kinds of needed multipliers to work and log. Our first two-hour shift went fast, and we turned things over to Bill J75WX, and Cory J79CM. As I said earlier this trip was a low- key effort, we would operate as much as we could, but we were not going to kill ourselves to get a big score. Fun and enjoyment were the name of the game. We kept the run station manned as much as possible, but in order for us to get some sleep, we did not always have multiplier station manned. On Saturday and Sunday afternoon we experienced super opening to first Europe, and then to Japan. We literally had what seemed like thousands of EU and JA stations calling. This continued both days until the bands folded. According to all the forecasts we are in a downward part of the sunspot cycle and 10 meters was not supposed to be that good. I guess someone forgot to tell the 10-meter band. It was really HOT both days. It was our best band and was where we made the most of our QSO’s. Never ever underestimate 10! On Sunday afternoon I worked my last shift on the run station, and then for me the CQWW was over, as I had no more shifts scheduled. I grabbed my camera and wandered around Portsmouth exploring and taking pictures. The harbor is just beautiful, as is Fort Shirley, an old British fort on the far side of the bay. By the time I got back there was just a few minutes till the end of the contest and Cory and Bill finished it out and made the final contacts. Trip Leader, Bill J75WX then saved all the logs from CT to floppies and put them safely away, he will massage them when we get home to remove any dupes or UBN’s. CQWW 2004 SSB was now history. We did not have a big score, but it met the criteria that we wanted, we operated and enjoyed ourselves. That is what matters most. If your killing yourself trying to make a large score, and not having fun, why do it? Remember ham radio is a hobby!
I then went and got my TS 570 out of the closet and set it back up and got on 30 meter CW using the 30/40 vertical and soon had a roaring pileup going. After a couple of hours I got tired and pulled the plug and went QRT and went to bed. When I shut the rig off there were still guys calling me. I was up the next morning as usual around 400am I made some coffee and was soon in front of the rig on 30 CW calling CQ. Like clockwork a nice pileup soon developed and I started to work and log them. As I said earlier, this is really living. If there are any armchair Dxers who read this who have ever dreamed of going on a Dxpedition, its time to get off the couch. There could not be a much easier place to get to than Dominica, and if you go during the off season rates at Picards’s are very reasonable. A beach front cottage off-season goes for $100.00 USD a day. Now that’s for a cottage that will sleep three. For a week if 3 people go it figures out to only $233.33 USD per person. This is for an air conditioned cottage with full kitchen and daily maid service and cable TV. You cannot stay in a motel in the states for that. If you use the Internet for airline tickets, use Travelocity or Orbitz, they usually have the best prices, also if you can leave and return during the week, prices are lower. I did the entire trip for a week for about $800.00 USD for everything, including food. A Dxpedition does not have to cost a fortune. I guarantee if you are a Dxer you will have the time of your life. A trip like this for a Dxer is what dreams are made of. Also when you get back you will have memories that will last a lifetime. Later in the day 10 and 15 opened again, this time I got on SSB and worked hundreds of stations all over the world. I again was up at 400am on Tuesday morning, pounding brass, this time with a straight key (a blast for sure) and made a lot of contacts all over the USA. Then as all good things must come to an end it was time to tear down the stations and antennas and pack up as we had a 300pm flight for home. It only took a couple of hours to pull down and pack the rigs and antennas. I then cooked up our last breakfast from Dominica. At 1100am Clem J73CI arrived with his van to take us and our gear to Melville Hall International Airport. After a long and slow round about drive he dropped us off at the airport. We then all checked in, and because we knew how to pack in advance we all had no overweight problems at all. We then proceeded to the security check area where we were asked if we had any nail files, knives or matches in our carry on bags, we all answered no, and that was the security check. We had our bags x-rayed and boarded our flight on the ungainly Super ATR 72 in a light rain. The pilot got off the ground only about half way down the runway as the plane was not fully loaded. After a bumpy but uneventful 2 hour flight to San Juan we touched down. We then proceeded to immigration and customs and once again had to face the TSA. The TSA agent was a woman who must have had a bad hair day; I had to empty my pockets, take off my shoes and even my belt before I was even allowed to walk through the metal detector. Then she gave me back everything I had in my pockets, my shoes, laptop computer, change, etc. in a plastic tray. I stowed everything back and then noticed I did not have my belt and another TSA agent found it on the floor! They even hassled poor old Larry and Cory. Finally we were allowed to proceed. Remember when taking an airline trip was enjoyable, not so today! We then board a Boeing 757 and had an uneventful trip back to Orlando International where we landed 20 minutes early. After a 2-hour drive we were once again back home and the CQWW 2004 trip was just a memory. I was greeted upon my arrival home by a large pile of QSL cards for J79AA. I had already ordered and received an ample supply of blank cards, and answered all these requests I had received the next day. Now QSL requests are answered the same day as I receive them. There is just NO excuse for doing like some DXpeditions do, waiting for months to answer QSL requests.
We would like to thank all those who worked us either before or after the contest, and also during the Contest. In closing, remember, if there are any Dxer’s who are afraid to come out of the closet and go on a Dxpedition, don’t be. You cannot imagine what you are missing. We will see you again for the next CQWW from where, only god knows, but it will be from somewhere, that you can put in your log! Remember “DX IS”
QSL information:
J75J via KR4DA
J75WX via W4WX
J79AA via W9AAZ
J79LR via W1LR
J79CM via N1WON
Written by,
Clarence J. Kerous W9AAZ
1104 Buggy Whip Trail
Middleburg, Florida 32068-3312
Email [email protected]
J75J raw score.
Q Z C
3626 79 252
Score 2,537,115
Lodging Information:
Picard’s Beach Cottage Resort
P.O. Box 34
Roseau, Dominica
Eastern Caribbean
Telephone 767-445-5131
Fax 767-445-5599
Website www.avirtualdominica.com
Email [email protected]