Comments from 3830:

ARRL DX Contest, CW

Call: PJ2T
Operator(s): N0VD, W0CG, W9VA, W9NJY, K9QVB, K9KM
Station: PJ2T

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

Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160: 584 57
80: 924 58
40: 1670 58
20: 1461 59
15: 2047 59
10: 1676 58
-------------------
Total: 8362 349 Total Score = 8,751,873

Club: Northern Illinois DX Association

Comments:

Congratulations to the TI5W gang for a strong win in M/2 and what appears to be
a new all time ARRL DX CW M/2 record from the DX side. Top ops, top hardware,
and top conditions all aligned to net this superb result.

PJ2T welcomed several first-time visitors to the station this weekend, and
we're in their debt for coming to staff this contest when we couldn't
muster enough CCC members for this event. Some of these guys described
themselves as novices to high-intensity contesting, for some it was their
first time on the DX side, and all of them did wonderful jobs adapting to high
rates and pileups. In addition, we ran N1MM for the first time, so all but one
of our guys was using new software also. We're happy with the result, which
appears to be a new South America record for M/2, topping the 1999 mark set at
HC8N.

We felt like we left little on the table except for a couple of little boo
boos, including running much of the first hour on 40 with the yagi pointed at
Europe, the last hour on 40 listening on a Beverage (gee, that band was QUIET),
and being too a bit too late to move to 10 meters both mornings. This just
proves that even the big DX stations are amateur amateurs, and we're just
laughing at ourselves. But those embarrassments had little impact and provide
little excuse for our score. We simply needed to have been about 9% faster on
all rates. The problem mult this contest was D.C.! Normally we're begging for
VE4 at the end of the contest but worked Manitoba on all six, missing DC on 160,
80, and 40. And we also had an unexpected hole with a South Dakota miss on 160.
Go figure. VO1GO never called us on 10, dang it.

We continue to be very happy with our decision to standardize on AL-1200
linears, which are reliable workhorses that are easy to repair in the field. We
now have five of them and the chronically on-the-blink Ten-Tec amps are on the
repairs-needed pile, as usual. Our six Dell Windows 7 machines are working well
after replacing a couple of hard drives last month, and we added a seventh
machine to the inventory this trip. Antennas are in good shape and we're
continuing to work hard on keeping up with tower rust.

Best wishes to Mal, NP2L, who came down with borderline pneumonia the week of
the trip and had to cancel. His medical news is better now, and he's
recovering well. That swayed our decision to go M/2 rather than M/M because the
average age of our crew is high and none of us on a short-staffed crew wanted to
operate the nearly 40 out of 48 hours needed to man a M/M properly.

CCC welcomes Dr. Andy Catanzaro, W9NJY, to CCC membership effective this week.
Andy retired December 31 from a long and demanding medical career, and this
trip was significant in helping him to decide that life after work could be a
lot of fun. He's superb operator with a wide range of skills, and we hope
to see him a lot at PJ2T in the future.

Thanks for the QSOs, congratulations to the guys who humbled us, raising the
competitive bar and helping all of us to push the contesting art to higher and
higher levels. Today's scores are incredible and ever-growing.

For the PJ2T ARRL DX CW 2013 Crew, 73,

- Geoff, W0CG/7, PJ2DX