I had planned on making an effort to participate in this year’s CQ WPX CW contest, as I enjoyed entering last year’s event, and logged a decent score (for me) .  But then there was the WEATHER – both Space weather and Terrestrial Weather!  Band conditions were poor a week ago, but had been slowly improving over the past few days, so I was optimistic.  Terrestrial weather had also been slowly improving, and the forecast for Saturday was sunny, warm, and light winds – perfect for boating!  My XYL said that it would be a great weekend to go out on the boat, and I was agreeable, as long as I could bring along some radio gear and “dabble” in the contest.  I knew that the setup would be less than ideal for contesting, but at least I would be on the air, and the terrestrial weather did indeed look ideal for a nautical excursion!

On Friday afternoon we moved on to the boat at the marina in Cadboro Bay where we moor it.  I had my laptop, IC-705 radio, AH-705 autotuner, and a 15 foot whip antenna screwed in to a base mount that I fastened to one of the railings. We planned to sleep on board and leave in the morning.   Here is the setup:

On Saturday, we were anchored near Sidney Spit, and had a nice clear takeoff angle in most directions.  Noise level was lower, and there were no other nearby boats.  I ran a wire from the base of the antenna mount straight down to the water level, where I attached several feet of submerged 4 inch wide copper strip.  I am not sure if this direct ground connection to the salt water made much difference, but it made me feel better about the installation.  I operated for 2 hours with only moderate success.  Some of the strongest signals were coming from Hawaii, and I could hear several Japanese, Argentinian, UK, Brazilian, and Japanese stations, but my QRP signal and low gain antenna were not able to make much of an impression in the pileups!  Brian (VE7JKZ) had a good signal, but I didn’t work any other IHF members.

Overall tally for the weekend was 2.5 hours of operating, 51 QSOs logged, 4,364 points.  Score is posted on 3830.

73,

Roger, VE7AP