IOTA from Curacao PJ2Y 2001/2002

IOTA 2001

Nine members of the Bristol Contest Group travelled to Curacao in July 2001. We were guests at Signal Point, the super QTH of W0CG and the Caribbean Contest Consortium.

Signal Point usually uses the call PJ2T, but we managed to get PJ2Y allocated to us for the IOTA contests in 2001 and 2002.

Operating the IOTA contest from the other side of the Atlantic was an interesting experience. As PJ2Y we made 2328 QSOs and scored about 6 million points in the contest. Outside the contest over 12,000 QSOs were made by members of the group signing PJ2/owncall.

We had an excellent station, courtesy of W0CG and the Caribbean Contest Consortium, but it is quite a different contest seen from the other side of the Atlantic. This REALLY IS a European contest, and we felt just like spectators at times. The most striking example of this was the 10m E's opening that happened in Europe. We could hear Europe, but we couldn't get ourselves heard despite a large monobander at 85ft. From the tropics 80m is just wall to wall QRN. We could see lightning on the horizon out over the sea for a lot of the time. Even the beverage didn't help much with the noise level. As a result, just 8 mults made on 80m, and two of those were Curacao !

There were some definite advantages being where we were... apart from the obvious ones, like sunshine, warm blue sea, beautiful palm lined beaches, cocktails by the pool ! At times 15m and 20m were just outstanding. Wall-to-wall JAs, and Oceania helped push up our points-per-QSO average. The prefix obviously attracted a lot of non-contest callers which helped during low times. 40m was open all night and we were getting some amazingly stong signals from Europe. Although the noise level was very high, with those sort of signals we could work most stations, if a bit slower than from the UK.

Operators: G0WKW, G3XSV, G4FKA, G3TKF, M0AXF, G0HFX, M0MAT, G3RFX, M0WLF
Total Claimed Score: 6,019,356

2002

The terrible conditions on the HF bands this year made it even more difficult to compete so far away from the centre of activity in Europe. 10 meters produced just 3 QSOs, which is pretty poor when you have a stack of 5 element monobanders to use. 15 meters was fairly quiet early on, but picked up later. Luckly 20m and 40m managed to sustain reasonable run rates. 80 meters produced just 19 QSOs from the 3 element delta loop, just too much QRN at 12°N.

Operators: G3XSV G3TKF G4FKA G0HFX M0WLF
Total Claimed Score: 4,214,364

PJ2Y QSL Card 2001

PJ2Y QSL Card