2019: CQWW CW From Madeira
I decided on a low key effort for CQWW CW in November 2019. On our previous visit to Madeira, earlier in the year, I spied an AirBnB cottage in a great location near the village of Santa, not far from Porto Moniz on the north-west coast of the island. I booked the cottage for CQWW- Janet and I returned in November, this time with my radio kit and antennas.
There wasn't much space for antennas at the cottage so I opted for a single band entry on 20m, taking a couple of fibreglass poles (10m and 12m long) plus plenty of coax, wire and ferrite rings. I was fortunate to receive help from a Portuguese ham who helped me get the short-call CR3S for the contest weekend.
Equipment I took with me: Elecraft K3 transceiver (with sub-receiver), Expert SPE 1.3k amplifier, logging with DXLog and Win4K3Suite by VA2FQ for a panadapter. Prior to the contest I operated as CT9/G4IRN; it was at this stage I discovered 20m was very noisy with local electrical noise, so I checked out the other bands. 40m was also noisy but 15m was much quieter, so I decided to do a 15m single band entry for the contest.
Propagation was fair - I didn't hear any far eastern (Japan, Thailand, Malaysia etc) stations but runs into Europe and the US were excellent.
After the contest I visited the CR3DX contest station - Janet spotted their antennas when we were driving around town before the contest - about 10 minutes walk from my QTH.
Madeira is a great destination in November/December for some warm and sunshine . Although the operating QTH in the hills was cooler and wetter, Porto Moniz and Funchal were around 23C during our stay.
Downtown Funchal - a tropical climate less than 4 hours flight from the UK.
The operating QTH in Santa. To the left is a 10m pole holding an elevated 15m ground-plane antenna (3 elevated radials). On the right is an inverted-Vee dipole for 15m. There was a gentle slope downwards in the direction of NA and EU towards the sea.
Janet kept me well refreshed during operating hours.
Kit set up, ready for the contest.
CR3S meets CR3DX. the day after the contest. (L-R) OM3BH, OM3GI, G4IRN (CR3S), HA3NU. Also in the CR3DX team but missing from the photo were OM7LW and OM2VL.
The CR3DX contest station.