All’s Well That Ends Well – A DX-Venture to The Bahamas
After my first successful DX-Venture to The Bahamas in February 2004, I got ambitious and thought about testing the limits of what I could fool the airlines into accepting as baggage and what I could manage from a logistical standpoint. We really loved the island and the reports said it had pretty well recovered from the two hurricanes that hit it a few months before. So we made plans to visit Grand Bahama Island again in November to participate in the CQ WW DX CW Contest.
How can you not like a place with sunrises like this!
On the last trip I took just a two vertical antennas and a dipole for 80 meters. These worked well during the ARRL DX contest but all I had to do was contact U.S. stations, no great test. With dreams of DX dancing like sugar-plums in my head, I started making more adventuresome plans.
Working DX was a good bit harder and I tried to develop a good band plan. Carl, K9LA, was very helpful getting me started. I also tried just about every propagation program I could find, to wit: W6ELProp, DXPROP, PropHF, HamCap, WinCap, and SpotPath. I also used the spreadsheets that come on the CD distributed with the ARRL Antenna Book. It was an interesting exercise, one that I will write about at some time in the future.
Finally, I developed a list of all of the announced DX operations, printed out maps of various areas, and put little stickers with their calls on as appropriate. I then spent hours developing a plan whereby I might contact as many of the rare entities and rare zone as I could.
Logistically, I had to limit myself to wire antennas and a maximum package length of 4 feet. And I wanted antennas that would have more gain than a dipole or vertical. I had a successful experience with a Moxon antenna during Field Day, so I built one for 20 meters. At least I knew its potential.
I gathered some data on a double-extended zepp antenna for 15 meters, one that had several db gain over a dipole. I built it, erected it at home, and my SGC-239 remote tuner was able to tune to less than 2:1 SWR.
I had great hopes for running a lot of contacts with Europe on 40 meters. I had signed up for the ARRL Antenna Modeling course and using EZNEC, designed a 40 meter Inverted Vee Beam with a theoretical gain of 6 db. Finally, I built a 160 meter dipole a full 256 feet long for 160 and 80. I had my trusty Sigma 5 vertical for 10 meters and as backup for the other bands.
My rig consisted of an Icom IC-76MkIIG rig with an MFJ antenna tuner, Logikey keyer and a computer loaded with N3JFP’s logging software. No Internet access was available due to hurricanes damage, but that was OK.
We left on Thanksgiving Day and the next morning I started erecting antennas. I bought one of those Aluminum masts that come in 4 foot sections, and with a little help soon had my Moxon 28 feet up, theoretically its optimum height. With two sets of guy ropes, the array survived over 48 hours of winds that exceeded 40 mph on occasion, although, as you can see, I lost the internal guying and the Moxon's geometry was messed up. I know how to fix that next time.
The center of the driven element of the 40 meter Vee beam was hoisted on a pulley to the top of the Moxon tower and the ends were supported by 15 foot crappie poles. I had brought two 32 foot telescoping poles. One was erected 16 feet to the Southwest of the 40 meter driven element, holding the reflector and pointing the array to Europe.
The other pole was erected near the cottage with the center of the 160 meter dipole at the apex, and a pulley at 24 feet to hold the center of the 15 meter zepp.
Amazingly, I was able to erect the entire farm in one day, finishing at sundown, 2 hours before the contest started, so I had virtually no time for testing. Mistake!
By 6:45 PM, after a quick shower and dinner, I was ready to get things going, only to find out that my computer screen was going black, a problem it had had six months before but not since. I borrowed another laptop from my hosts and logged the first three hours of the contest on an Excel spreadsheet, not something I advise you to try.
Quite frankly, I had trouble getting antennas to tune correctly and kept fiddling around with them, trying to get something to work. The 40 meter beam was giving me fits, not tuning consistently, so I switched to the 160 meter dipole which didn’t tune at all on 160 but did tune acceptably on 40 meters and 80 meters. Of course, at its modest height, the radiation pattern is virtually circular.
The Moxon worked great on 20 meters, tuning at <1.5:1 with an S9 + 10. I had good results with it, my computer decided to wake up, so I started using my logging program, and finally got a good run going. Results with 40 meters were not as good and I went to bed about midnight.
I got up early the next morning, hoping to work JA’s on 40 meters with my beam, but heard few and only worked one. I fiddled around with 10 meters for a while, making a few contacts. 20 meters was a zoo and I decided to let it cool off and work on 15 for a while. The zepp was tuning at about 3:1 and my trusty Sigma 5 vertical was 1:1 with nice signal reports when I asked, 579 in Europe . I managed to get a good run going, well over 150 per hour when all of a sudden, I could not hear a thing. The S-meter showed life, but no audio.
I fiddled round with my rig for a while but the sad truth was that the audio amplifier in the IC-706 had blown. I thus discovered a little know threat that all hams should guard against: LISTENING TOO HARD CAN RUIN YOUR AUDIO AMPLIFIER! I have never seen a warning about this on a radio so was unaware of it before this. Perhaps someone should do some research on this seldom discussed hazard!
I did not have a spare rig so I was out of business, finished, kaput, QRT. I had put a lot of planning and preparation into this trip, and was very hopeful of hanging up a credible score, but the lack of a solution meant my fate was sealed so completely that there just didn’t seem to be any point in sulking about it.
You may remember the word hubris, a Greek concept where the gods punished people who got too presumptuous, who aimed too high. The gods always had the last word, knocking them down a few pegs. I don’t think that I was presumptuous, but I do believe that I bit off more than was reasonable for a one-man operation. I’d do the same thing again, however, if I could take along a partner.
Is room for more than just vertical antennas or dipoles on a solo DX-Venture operation? Probably so, but I’d stick to one hot antenna, like a Moxon or a quad, and then do a multi-band vertical like the Sigma 5 or a multi-band wire like the GR5V for everything else and just not worry about any shortfall. I’d also give serious thought into putting all the effort into a single-band effort. I left the Moxon there and maybe next year I’ll do a 20 meter SOSB.
I am a big believer in redundancy. I had two keyers, two antenna tuners, and two antennas that could work acceptably on the popular bands. Truthfully, I thought that I had covered all of the bases. Not so, obviously. We assume that these modern, well-engineered transceivers are 99.99% reliable, but that’s not 100%. I should have taken a back-up rig along too.
As Yogi Berra surely could have said, “You ought to take a long some EXTRA redundancy." You got it, Yogi!
What else did I gain from this?
First, I had a delightful week in the Bahamas with my wife!
Second, I had the opportunity to run at a rate in excess of 150 per hour, at least for a while.
Third, I learned a lot about propagation.
Fourth, I started learning how to build antennas and predict their performance.
Fifth, I learned to know my limitations.
“Wait a minute,” you ask, “Going to all that work and then having an abrupt QRT one-quarter of the way into a contest sounds like a horrible conclusion, so what was this about All’s Well That Ends Well?”
The answer is that fishing was terrific! I managed to catch a couple dozen bonefish, over half in the 3 to 5 pound class, and one over 7 pounds. We also saw and had a shot at several fish that were in the 10 to 12 pound class, very respectable fish. They’ll still be there when I go back, and I will! But this time I’ll be sure to do a SOSR, that’s Single Operator-Spare Radio!
More photos of our trip are at http://community.webshots.com/scripts/editPhotos.fcgi?action=viewall&albumID=226968177
For those who are attracted by the concept of ham radio and bonefishing in The Bahamas, we stayed at North Point Riding Club. Pictures of the facilities are at http://www.angleradventures.com/aanrpc.htm
The masts came from The Mast Company, www.tmastco.com
The crappie poles for the Moxon and for end support came from Catfish Supply Co., www.catfishsupplyco.com
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