C6AKT

Hello.

This year I came back to Bahamas for the second year running using the C6AKT call.

I always try to take everything with me on my BERU trips, this one was no different. 2el vertical on 80m, 4sq on 40m and a host of other verticals. All to be setup right at the waters edge. The Team Carribean morphedin the World Travellers and I suggested that they should have Don and Nigel in the team which actaully meant I became a spare which meant I could  do something a bit different. I am usually a qrp operator (BERU 2017 aside) but this time I was asked could I take a little more RF to help those with more simple antennas.So I packed a Hardrock-50 which is a 50W PA, the result of the ARLL 50W PA contest a few years ago. It mates well with the KX3 and meant all the coax feeds and antennas were fine.

Probably poor planning on my part I got the travel days wrong so I arrived the afternoon before the contest. Not too much of a problem if you have all your antennas ready, A bit taxing if they are still in the bag. So once I arrived out came the 80m and 40m antennas as I knew I would need those first and they would take the most effort to put up. It was very windy and sadly murphy appeared, just as the guys were being attached and broke one of the 80m phased verticals. So a rapid rethink meant an 80m GP. I left the rest to take down post contests. The 40m 4SQ went up  were it did last year and I covered the shelf by the sea with radials for the 40m and 80m antennas, Finishing just as the sun was setting.

I ran the contest with an SDR-Play RSP1A working as a pan adapter for the KX3 and I had an ELAD T/R switch. I provided sufficient isolation for my needs. Might not if you were running 400W. I also deployed a couple of coax line static and stub coax filters.

The idea was to run two KX3 with one being active the other sitting there on the ‘other band’, in the ennd the second KX3 and RSP1A never came out of the bag.

I probably heard 4-5 times more stations that managed QSO which had to be the RF level effect. QSB was vert fast and deep here on 20m. 40m was nicely open.

I spent a while trying to work Nigel 3B8XF who popped out of the noise on 40m but typical once the initial exchnage happened static returned. I had to log 001 which must not be right 🙂

I use win-test to log.

I was on 80M for first ½ hour then moved upwards through the bands, looking at the summary from 2018 and operating outside of it to analyse and previous operating plans with openings all marked out in time order. I was asked to qsy bands a few times as I would have been a bonus. No QSO’s on 10M at all even though had been asked to QSY.

I picked up Colin, ZF2CA, Ian V31GX and VP9IV as I had promised to try to. Not sure about Don C56DF.There was a fairly good path to VE and I could hear lots of VK/ZL, even managed to work a few. I was interesting to hear all the G calls at the time.

Only moan was some VE stations, please guys don’t just stick to 40wpm+

As was S&P most of the Non Beru callers were a rare annoyance a few times, in fact they were a relief during the quiet times of which there were a few.

All in all very enjoyable.

Dom

M1KTA/C6AKT