Having completed two trips to St Kitts for the Commonwealth Contest (Beru) in 2008 and 2009, this year I wanted to try somewhere new - but still in the Caribbean. I also wanted somewhere that hadn’t been activated in this contest for some time and somewhere that would have some other interesting features to explore outside radio operating.
Last year when flying into Antigua to connect to St Kitts, I had seen that there was a connecting flight to Montserrat and also Mike W1USN and Bob AA1M who I met in St Kitts in 2008, had been to Montserrat in 2009 and so I had been able to discuss their trip with them too.
I had worked George K2DM on a couple of his times in Montserrat in CQWW and knew that his operating location had a good take-off to Europe – which is pretty key to being successful in Beru – so I investigated and found that the apartment that he uses at Gingerbread Hill was available for the week including the Beru weekend. Dave, G3TBK had a business trip to Montserrat in autumn 2009 and he was able to have a look at Gingerbread Hill for me and also to very kindly sort out a VP2M licence.
I had thought to replace my FT897 for this trip but chose instead to import a new Tokyo High Power 600W amplifier from the US, which would be light enough to take in my baggage. My plan was to take my radio and laptop in my hand luggage and put everything else in with the amplifier in a 23kg max check-in bag. When it came to packing I couldn’t get the check-in bag down to 23kg so ended up with two bags at about 20kg and the hand baggage at about 15kg. The hardest part of these trips is getting all the gear there safely!
George has imported a 60 foot Rohn tower to Montserrat and this is mounted on the back of the small apartment block where I stayed. Quite a lot of radio gear is stored in a container on the site – including a Mosley CL33 tribander and a treasure chest of helpful goodies from which I extracted an SWR bridge and coax switch.
As I didn’t have a tuner with me, I had to get my aerials resonant on 80m and 40m and this took some time, but the Mosley, set to CW lengths was great with no adjustment necessary. I suspended the dipoles from the tower and used my normal catapult method to get the ends high over some palm trees in each direction. It was a hot morning’s work but I had everything running by mid afternoon on the Thursday before the contest.
I spent a bit of time on the radio on Thursday and Friday – just over 1,000 Qs before the contest. I had never previously had any complaints about the FT897 signal, but with the amplifier and beam, the signal was now noticeably clicky. This is still unresolved and is unrelated to the set-up that I used on Montserrat – I haven’t found other reports of similar problems with this set so it has either always been like this, but the problem was not noticeable until this trip due to the aerial gain and amplifier, or the radio has deteriorated since I bought it. Anyway, I am unlikely to use it in such a high profile application again, so this may remain unresolved.
On the morning of the contest I woke early and found that high winds overnight had brought down one end of my 80m dipole. A frantic 15 minutes in the dark, without a torch, had this reconfigured as a half-inverted-V and the SWR looked good.
I had a plan of times and bands, based on my previous experience and some notes from Dave. As with warfare the plans had to be slightly abandoned in the heat of battle – but apart from some great unexpected openings – I kept to the plan most of the time.
The first hour was mostly on 80m with VK, ZL and VE contacts – an encouraging start. I used Wintest with a target file from last year’s trip to V47CD. I exceeded the target in the first hour and after that there were only two hours in the rest of the contest when I didn’t at least match the previous trip.
I followed the normal pattern of moving up through the bands during the day and then back down again later. However, as I could switch bands very quickly, I kept checking other bands that might be open and picked up some great contacts this way – SO2R would have been really useful. For example, at about 06:30 UTC on Sunday I was working Gs on 80m but then had a quick look on 20m and worked a run of VKs there. It is quite hard, but important to keep looking around, as a missed opening can be very costly.
I had quite a few 5 band contacts but no 10m contacts into Europe during the contest.
The most exciting opening was a spell on 15m from 02:45 UTC on Sunday. Here I worked 10 VK/ZL stations but also Prasad VU2PTT – over the South Pole - we were both delighted at that one.
For the final hour, I was trying to reach either 1,000 Qs or 10,000 points and just managed to clock 10,000 points on the dot at 09:48 with my final QSO, number 963.
I crashed out for few hours and then as a break from radio, set off on a Volcano watching trip. The Soufriere Hills volcano is the most active in the Caribbean and has caused devastation to the south half of the island. I saw the volcano from the accessible boundaries. It was about 3,000 feet high with the top 1,000 feet smouldering like a massive bonfire. From the East I looked over what had been the international airport and from the west I looked over the former capital town of Plymouth. It was amazing to see this live Geology with some new land that had extended the island only in February this year.
Where the old airport used to be.
Apart from the Volcano, I had a few beach trips and snorkelled with a turtle on one visit. The barrel and tube sponges on the reef were superb. Up from the beach there was a convenient cold shower for washing the volcanic black sand off.
I had a blast on HF on Monday and Tuesday with runs to JA on 80 and 20 and loads of EU contacts on all bands including 10m. I had to go QRT at 1pm on Tuesday to dismantle the aerials in daylight as my flight was early on Wednesday. I stopped at just over 4,000 Qs and 104 DXCCs, including those in the contest.
Party time!
On Tuesday night I had some unanticipated entertainment as a couple from New York were staying in the floor below me at this time and they had been invited to some island events but didn’t have any transport. I went as their driver to a cultural exchange with India – this was held in the complex that was built with money raised by the “Music for Montserrat” benefit concert in 1997 – and then to the Governor of Montserrat’s St Patrick’s Day reception at the Governor’s Mansion. A great ending to a really good trip.
Jade the parrot
Roy used to play on the slopes of the volcano