Madeira January 2010
After cancelling the CQWW 160m contest expedition to Flores, CU8, Azores I planned to run this contest from our HB9LL station. But when the charter airline AirBerlin came up with very low price tickets to Madeira I changed my mind and booked a flight to Madeira. My good friend Luis, CT3EE, agreed that I could use their new contest station at Santa. This is a small village at 540 m above Porto Moniz, North West Madeira. Luis also took care of a hotel reservation. Preparation of the travel was rounded up with packing my Elecraft K3 transceiver and paying 10 kg overweight in advance.
There was a second important reason for this trip: Searching for the lost material shipment of our past IOTA expedition to Santa Maria island, CU1 back in Mai 2008. Hernani, CT3BX was of help at that time and transported by truck 2 wooden boxes and one tube with a 10m telescopic tower from Switzerland to Barcelona. One box contained a FET PA and the second box PC related material as well as antenna tuner, coax cables, beacon keyer etc. I guessed that this material has been forgotten somewhere in Barcelona or went by error to Madeira island. Hernani got very ill and was out of reach for months and has no memory of 6 months of his life.
Travel to Madeira on January 21 was without problems. Upon arrival Luis waited for me at the airport and accompanied me to Porto Moniz in the booked hotel Residencial Salgueiro. Next morning Luis showed me their new contest station in Santa. The building is a former cow slaughter and the shack is installed in the former deep freezing room. They dispose of 3 towers with mono band beams for 40m: 2el. Beam, 2 x 20m: 4el. Beams, 2 x 15m: 5el. Beams and 2 x 10m: 6el. Beams, 2 dipoles for 80m and 1 dipole for 160m. Recently, a big storm turned all beams in a way that all coax cables were cut except the 20m beam to EU! Luis, CT3EE and Joe, CT3BD started with the repair of coax cables and I became QRV in RTTY on 20m. This was a preparation and training for the BARTG contest next day. Propagation was OK and so I started into this contest with the 20m 4el. Beam fixed to EU and one 80m dipole. During the contest I decided to stay on 20m and to rest during the night when 20m was closed. I was very happy to see that, with the beam pointing to Europe, QSOs to North and Central America were no problem. QSOs with Japan and New Zealand could also be realized.
As station I used my Elecraft K3 with MMTY in FSK mode running under WinTest. PA was an OM2500hf PA running cool with 1 kW. The result was good thinking of the restriction to one band and with fixed beam into direction EU:
QSO DXCC JA W VE VK Cont
20m 781 58 6 10 4 1 6
Score: 370194 points
After the contest I installed a 30m delta loop which was on hand from our last lighthouse activity at Ponta do Pargo lighthouse in January 2007. Pile ups to North America were tremendous and I had never thought that there was such a big need in 30m QSOs with Madeira.
During the following week Luis, Joe and Jose CT3DZ came to Santa and repaired step by step the antennas. They also hanged up the 160m dipole using a big Eucalyptus tree as fixing point. As receiving antennas 160m long Beverages in direction to EU and North America were installed. The coax cable to the EU Beverage crossed the street in a waste water tunnel! To make them bidirectional there was no terminating resistor installed. What was new for me is the installation of some radials at the Beverage feeding points: It really increased signal strength! The receiving antennas are a must on low bands and a must for mountain places on Madeira as we learned on several low band activities. For me it looked like atmospheric noise layers are active from a certain altitude on reinforcing the elevated noise of sub tropic regions.
The noise level on the 160m dipole at Santa was S7-S8 and the only way to cut down the noise was Beverage receiving antennas. But as the Beverages were without terminating resistor the noise level was around S3, compared with S7-S8 on the dipole.
The contest went fine and somehow I managed to stay awake two nights in a row and to sleep a little bit during the day. As I entered the assisted class I could monitor the DX cluster and could work some fine DX like NP4D, 9H1XT, JH4UYB, NP2X, 6W/PA3EWP, EY8MM, FM5BH, HB0/HB9LCW, P49V ( at 21.33 UT –full day light at Aruba!), PJ2T, OH1VR/VP9, C6AKQ, TF4X etc. When propagation opened towards North America I got many cluster spots which proves that I did put a big signal on the air.
The final result is very good and so far my best result ever achieved in a 160m CQWW CW contest as single operator:
Call sign : CT3FN; Zone : 33; Locator : IM12JU; Operating time : 26h17
BAND QSO DUP DXC S/P POINTS
160 1208 19 70 52 11995
TOTAL SCORE : 1 463 390
Before and after the 160m CW contest I was regularly QRV in RTTY mode. The overall QSO statistic is:
BARTG contest 781 CQWW; 160m CW contest 1120; RTTY QSOs 570; CW QSOs 1116; PSK31 QSOs 40; Total QSOs 3627
During the night of Monday, February first to Tuesday Madeira has been attacked by very heavy rain and storm. The result was landslip with rocks, streets floated and dense fogg. Going up to Santa was impossible because the main street of Santa was a river. It was also impossible to drive to Funchal.
After some telephone calls I came into contact with Hernani, CT3BX. Hernani was 6 months in the hospital with severe health problems and has big problems to remember the time before he got ill and during the hospital time – there is a gap in his memory. After some search the missing boxes and the tube were found at Cargo Madeira, in a forgotten container. A meeting was arranged on Tuesday but due to the weather situation and the closed roads I could only drive to Funchal the following day. I was completely happy to have the expedition material back, especially the FET PA and it has been shipped by ship and truck back to Germany.
On the last evening I was celebrating the successfully 2 weeks on Madeira with a good meal and a bottle of wine not knowing the consequences. During the night I got very ill (Salmonella infection). Next noon, on the departure day somehow I managed to drive to the airport, return the rented car “in one piece” and got help at the health help point: An injection and some Imodium capsules allowed me to fly back to Zurich and further on by train to Liestal and by car to Hoelstein where I arrived 01.00 am next day. HB9CRV / CT3FN
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