St. Kitts lessons learned

We are home from our trip to St. Kitts. I thought I would capture some of the more important lessons learned from this trip while these details were fresh in my mind. Here they go in no particular order.

• Concentrate on goals - I've always been big on setting and making goals for a 100 Pound DXpedition. For one thing, this provides focus during the packing effort as you ask yourself on each decision, "Is this helping me reach my goals?" During the trip the goals help provide a concrete measure of your effectiveness in both your planning and operation. If you are meeting your goals, or on pace to meet your goals, your plan is working. Finally, once you meet your goals you can take a breath and celebrate a bit for your job well done. All of these things make sense if your goals make sense. My goals for this trip did not make sense. The three state goals were:
  
  1. DXCC
  2. 1000 Qs in the contest
  3. New record for V4 for CQ WW DX SSB SOLP
  
  The unstated goal was to have a competitive contesting station on the island with just the stuff in my bag, implying the other goals. In truth, a goal of 500 QSOs in the contest with 100,000 points was probably a more reasonable goal. DXCC should have been a stretch goal at this point in the cycle.
  Why did my goals get out of whack? There has been a steady progression of adding more-and-more to each trip. Some of this was to test limits. Some of this was due to laziness and poor preparation on my part. Certainly this trip did not get the same attention and focus that the Montserrat trip got, or that this trip deserved. I let the goals for the trip get out-of-hand and everything else followed soon after.
  Be creative with your goals. For example, I wanted to participate in the CQ WW DX SSB contest on this trip. There are twelve different categories I could have competed: low-power all-band, LP 10m, LP 15m, LP 20m, LP 40m, LP 80m, QRP all-band, QRP 10m, QRP 15m, QRP 20m, QRP 40m, or QRP 80m. The records are listed below. Five of these categories, including QRP all-band, have no record on St. Kitts. I could have chosen to compete in one of those and been virtually guaranteed to have not only won the category but have set the all-time record for it, too!
  The lesson here is simple: scrutinize your goals for your DXpedition well for they dictate, or strongly influence, many of the subsequent decisions you'll be making.


• Get a local call sign - I am truly shocked by the listening skills of some operators. There will be some operators who will have NE1RD and zone 5 in there log this year because they logged what they wanted to hear instead of what they heard. That was both their problem and mine, though, as my goofy call sign (V4/NE1RD) caused many repeats and much confusion. All of this ate precious time during the contest and cost me several multipliers.


• Terrain and building must be accommodating - Like the "get a local call sign" point, I covered this in a blog entry this week. A building providing multiple floors and high accessible points is crucial for getting your antennas in the clear. This is especially crucial if you plan on operating on the low bands.


• You don't have to operate on the low bands - I have been trying to bring enough stuff to create antennas for all bands 6m through 80m. In fact, you can have a lot of fun and be very successful if you were to bring just the smallest of antennas that cover 10m-20m. With the exception of a couple of QSOs, that is all I worked on this trip. If I had declared up-front that these were the only bands to be worked I could have saved the weight of two masts (12 pounds), two 100 foot runs of coax (8 pounds), and the setup and tear-down time of these two antennas. Swap the Mosley Mini-32-A tribander for a simple Buddipole (8 pounds) or TW Antennas TW2010 (10 pounds or so) and not only does the weight budget drop, the need for a hard-sided golf bag to handle those long parts is eliminated, too. If you are trying to operate on the low bands it requires the long masts and the golf bag. Eliminating that goal, avoiding 30m-160m, simplifies things greatly.


• Tools are heavy - I am carrying too many tools. The host can almost certainly provide everything but soldering iron and solder (I'll still carry those). If you are traveling to a villa or home where your host can provide tools it save you from carrying them. I didn't ask my host if tools were available prior to the trip but found a set more complete than the one I brought in a closet. Knowing I could have left the tool bag at home would have saved me about 5-10 pounds.


• Your operating position is important - Again, because of my experiences on St. John, Deer Isle, and Montserrat, I thought there would always be something I could borrow from the house to make a reasonable operating position. It would be a small table, comfortable yet stiff chair, and so on. No such items were available at the St. Kitts villa. I'm sure the host would have provided one had I asked in advance. I did not. Next time I will.


• Travel medicines are important - I should have packed Imodium or similar medications on this trip. I spent from 4 O'clock Monday morning until Wednesday morning with symptoms of food poisoning. I was miserable and dangerously dehydrated by the end of it. I spent time reading about oral rehydration therapy and drinking Cool Blue Gatorade. I was really quite nervous about traveling. Luckily, things had run their course by the time the cab came to take us to the airport. It could have been worse--and messier.
  In retrospect, I had not been careful about making sure my immunizations were up-to-date, I had not had a flu shot, I did not carry anti-diarrheal medications, nor did I have or purchase insect repellant (the mosquitos ate us alive), or make other reasonable and prudent medical planning. Between the scores of mosquito bites, two presumed tick bites (false alarms), and the bout of toilet hugging, I think I've finally learned this lesson.


• This is a vacation ... not an assignment. I've made this whole thing too big, really, trying to push limits, capture audio, create a DVD, blog about it, make a web site, compete with other in the local contesting club, and so on. If I'm not careful, I'll forget this is supposed to be fun and relaxing. In fact, that line was crossed some time ago.
  I do enjoy these trips. I enjoy playing with the radio. I also enjoy sharing what I've learned in the hopes that someone else might happen upon these words and try it for themselves. But, too much of this sharing leads to a life lived in a fish bowl. After nearly 400 blog entries and several web sites, I believe I've shown just about all that needs to be shown to give a reasonably motivated reader a head-start in their adventure. I believe I pushed myself a little too hard on this one.

There were more lessons learned, of course, but these were the big ones. Now that I am home and resting comfortably in my own bed, I can reflect upon these and others. Soon it will be time to plan another 100 Pound DXpedition.

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V4 St. Kitts & Nevis record from the CQ WW web site.

 Power Call                  Score       Qs    Zone Cty Year
 A    V47KP(W2OX)            6,196,554   4830  125  421  02
 28   V47NS(W9NY)            1,230,732   3054   34  119  00
 21   VP2KAC                 1,783,500   3941   37  137  81
 14   VP2KAA                 2,011,185   4186   37  150  81
 7    VP2KAE                   432,942   1600   27   91  81
 3.7  V44NK                     26,352    353   11   25  97

 LA   V44NK                    127,566    857   33   81  95
 L28  V47TV(OH3VV)             857,934   3284   31   95  91
 L21  V47NK                     67,320    660   16   35  96
 L14  NC2N/V44                   7,595    127   14   35  04
 L7   V49A(EW1AR)              135,408    705   18   75  05
 L3.7 V49A(EW1AR)               40,227    298   16   53  04

 Q21  V44/EW1AR(NC2N)           15,708    117   14   37  04

 MS   V47Z                   4,758,814   4308  119  402  94
 M2   V47NS                 11,531,688   7154  134  530  02
 MM   VP2KC                 37,770,012  17767  175  677  79