C6ASB - February 2004
Abaco - NA-080 FL16
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Steve AK0M and Sandy KC0RD returned to the Sand Dollar Villa at Treasure Cay, Abacos, Bahamas, from Feb 21-28, 2004. Operation included limited participation by C6ASB in the ARRL CW DX contest, with just a few hours of operation on late Sunday afternoon. But what a station!
For
those of you that worked C6ASB during the contest, here’s why the CW was
sometimes a little bit rough and the response to calls often slower than
normal. The station
ergonomics were not the best, but the station environment could hardly be
beat! Travel delayed my operation until Sunday afternoon, but I still
decided to get on for a few hours anyway.
Coming from Iowa in February, it was also a high priority to get
some sun and warm air! So, I set up for a couple of hours on the beach.
The station consisted of a Yaesu FT-817 running on the internal battery, a K1EL K10SMT memory keyer, a set of Palm Paddles (that often would hang up due to sand in the contacts), and logging using GOLog on a Palm PDA. Since the beach chair was aluminum, the magnetic base on the paddles was of little use. The antenna was a modification of the W3FF Buddipole design, using a single center-loaded vertical element with 8 ground radials, installed right at the edge of the surf. Initially I started at the 5W power level, then dropped to 2.5W as the battery started going down, then finally to 0.5W for about the last 40 or so QSOs. If the pileup noticed any difference, I couldn’t tell it! My battery finally completely died with quite a few stations still calling; sorry I was not able to work you all. It was a real challenge to juggle between the Palm for initially copying the calls, the paddles to initiate the exchange, the keyer to finish the qso, and then the Palm again to log the qso. Next time there will have to be a CW interface to the Palm…
The view is looking NW toward the US. 146 QSOs were made during the contest, all on 20m, in 2.5 hours of operation.
After the contest was over, very little ham radio
activity occurred until late in the week. On Monday, Sandy and I
went bonefishing. We used a different guide this time, by the name
of O'Donald McIntosh, and were quite successful. I was determined to
catch a 'bone with my fly rod. Well, I knew it was going to be a
good day when I unexpectedly hooked a bonefish while doing some practice
casts for O'Donald for purposes of assessing my casting abilities! I lost
that fish, but shortly later landed my fist 'bone on a fly rod, about a
3-pounder. 
In the initial run, my fly line tangled around my shirt
sleeve button, so that posed some challenges. But what great sport!
I caught two more on the fly rod, lost at least 3 more, and missed at
least another 6 "sure-thing" opportunities due to my relatively
poor casting ability. 
Sandy caught her first bonefish as well, using
spinning gear, and in fact, it was a double hook-up as I had one on my fly
rod at the same time as well! She also lost several fish as well as
missed several other good opportunities. With some more practice and
experience, I have no doubt that we could have had a 12+ fish day.
O'Donald is very professional, has good equipment, and knows how to find
fish; I will certainly try to hire him again in the future.
Tuesday I began some antenna improvements for Matt's
station. I installed a Butternut/Bencher HF6V vertical on the back of the
villa in order to add 80m, 40m and 30m capability to the station, in
addition to the existing Cushcraft R6000 capability on 20-6m. 
This was
completed on Thursday afternoon, with several beach and pool and hiking
"interruptions" interspersed in-between. One radial each
for 20m, 30m and 40m was included; I had trouble getting my loaded radial
design for 80m to work, but the antenna showed a sharp notch in SWR down
to about 2.3:1, so I used an MFJ-941C antenna tuner left onsite by a prior
ham renter to match the antenna. Thursday and Friday nights I worked
some short stints on 80m CW, and was pleasantly surprised to generate
pileups, primarily of European stations. Being from the midwest US, I was
very surprised at the strength of some of those EU signals! I also made
some QSO's on 40m and 30m with the HF6V to ensure it worked on those
bands. I think this will be a very good antenna for the low bands at
Matt's villa.
A couple of side notes regarding the HF6V: the radials are not permanently installed, and will have to be pulled out and tied off, then rolled back up into storage, by future ham renters. But this only takes a few minutes and is not a difficult task. The 15m stub was left off the HF6V to lessen the chance of wind damage and to reduce the profile of the antenna, and since the R6000 covers that band it really wasn't necessary.
Although I didn't get in as much radio operation as I had hoped, I was still pleased with the results of the trip and the opportunity for us to enjoy some nice weather and fishing. We're already considering when our next trip will be!
This is IOTA NA-080, CQ Zone 8, and grid square FL16.
QSL via AK0M.
Station Equipment - C6ASB - February 2004:
Yaesu FT-817 Transceiver
Yaesu FT-857 Transceiver
Cushcraft R6000 20m-6m vertical
Butternut/Bencher HF6V vertical for 80m, 40m, 30m
Adaptation of W3FF Buddipole for beach vertical
CMOS Super Keyer II
K1EL K10SMT keyer (packaged in an Altoids tin!)
Bencher Paddles
Palm Paddles
Heil BM-10 Headset/Microphone
Palm V running GOLog software for portable logging
IBM ThinkPad 600e laptop for logging & internet access
Writelog logging software
AK0M
Steve Sutterer
1928 Continental Drive
Cedar Falls, IA 50613
USA
SASE requested with direct QSLs.
Direct QSLs are usually answered within a few days after receipt.
All C6ASB logs are also available on LOTW.
Bureau cards are accepted, but get processed as time permits and usually only about once a year.
73, Steve - AK0M, C6ASB