KH0AA
Saipan Island, Northern Marianas


2002 CQ WW DX Contest SSB - Multi / Single
by JP1NWZ, JF1SQC and JE1JKL


Click here for 2003 CQWW DX Contest SSB


Ant01 Ant02  Ant03  Ant04 
160m - Bent Dipole @ 5m (like a pair of elevated radials)
75m - Full size vertical @ 0m with 1 elevated radial
         Bent Dipole (or 2x elevated radialos) @ 5m (like a pair of elevated radials)
40/20/15/10m - Force12 C-4 @ 12m
                         Cushcraft R-7000 @ 1m
40m - Loaded vertical @ 2m with 4 elevated radials
15m - 3el.Yagi @ 7m
Location: Mariana Resort @ Cliff 100m above sea level

CQ Contest! - Saturday/Sunday October 26/27
JF1SQC    JE1JKL    JP1NWZ 

We set new Oceania M/S Record!!
OPs
JF1SQC/JE1JKL/JP1NWZ(l->r)


Claimed Score - KH0AA - M/S
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:    2    1       2
   80:  115   16      24
   40:  493   29      65
   20: 1636   38     141
   15: 2468   37     128
   10: 2248   37     128
------------------------------
Total: 6962  158     488
Total Score = 13,201,010
(Published Final Score: 12,599,064)
 

Events in the Extended-Weekend:

Fri, October 25
 3pm (05z) - Team arrived at Saipan after 3.5 hr flight from Tokyo Narita
           - Custom officer told us that it was a bit too early for Ski
             season there, looking at our antennas in a ski case
 5pm (07z) - arrived at the shack.
           - Only C-4 was up and operational
           - started antenna works. Sunset within 1 hr!
 7pm (09z) - MFJ-986 said SWR for 15m 3-el.Yagi was infinity. Changing
             element lengths or baluns did not work.
           - 1 hr investigation revealed that there was RFI from local
             shortwave broadcast station FEBC

Sat. October 26
 1am (15z/Fri)
           - All the antenna works completed
           - Team started Rig and PC setup
 4am (18z) - realized that PC had problems controling rigs for 2xMULT stations
 5am (19z) - gave up PC controls for MULT stations
           - Rig settings had not been completed yet
           - went to bed anyway
 8am (22z) - woke up and restarted rig settings
 9am (23z) - rig and PC settings (once) completed
9:30am (23:30z)
           - pre-contest meeting (no big issues then)
9:50am (23:50z)
           - accidentally erased important files in RUN/STN1 PC
           - swapped the RUN/STN1 PC with the spare PC
9:55am (23:55z)
           - PC for 2nd MULT station (STN3) went dead. (HDD crash)
           - no more PC left for 2nd MULT station
           - gave up PC for 2nd MULT station (PC for webcluster was not
             usable for DOS environment)
           - set the PC clocks with Japan Standard Time with Japanese version
             of Atomic Clock (with TZ=JST-9)  Yes, it worked even there!
10am (00z/Sat)
           - The contest started
 2pm (04z) - realized that PC clocks were 4 minutes behind
           - PC clocks were adjusted back to JST
 4pm (06z) - revealed that the clock of RUN/STN1 PC (Spare PC) was slow
             1 min/hr and MULT1/STN2 PC followed the clock of RUN/STN1 PC
           - swapping STN1 and STN2 PC solved the problems

Sun. October 27
11pm (13z) - highlight for the 80m bent dipole (or 2x elevated radials) came
             - calling BV2B on 80m with the full size vertical for 10 minutes
               gave us no success
             - finally, got him with the bent dipole with just a single call!

Mon. October 28
 5am (19z) - Bands were almost dead for 2 hrs
 6am (20z) - Started taking down antennas
10am (00z) - The contest was over
           - continued taking down antennas and started packing equipment
 1pm (03z) - completed packings
 2pm (04z) - left the shack for Airport
           - visited WH0V and KH0AC on our way
 4pm (06z) - departed for Narita Tokyo

Team learned a lot of lessons from this operation.
MNI TNX for the QSO!!