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Having fulfilled "CQ WPX SSB 1996" from Anguilla we got "island fever". Everybody knows that rare country run in international contest will give much better result comparing with Siberia. The place most of us are from. Looking around lot of contest result and making breakdown sheets we decided to try CQ WPX CW 1997 from Cyprus Island. We proceed from supposition that Cyprus is situated relatively close to Russia, visa-free entrance and hospitality of authorities and aborigines to Russians. |
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Main engine of this project is Vadim Travin RA9JX. His persistence to realize this project was only the thing made successful the achieving main goal. The first team, including RA9JX, RZ9UA, RA9JR, RZ3BW , RA3CQ, was sponsored by JSC "Zond Sviaz" Moscow. |
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In our luggage was FT990 and IC706 transceivers, couple of ALPHA-91, A3S and DX77 antennas, few thousand feet of cables and wires, dozens of insulators to make wire antennas, as well as "expeditioner's dream" aluminium green tubes (painted by "military green" colour). |
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We were allocated in the hotel placed on Mediterranean beach in the town of Limassol. First of all we explored the hotel roof and got lucky! The roof was absolutely flat and there were lot of pins, hooks to fix ropes and towers. DX77 was installed at first night. Next morning we began H22A operation. This call made great pile-ups, but getting lot of questions «what is a country» amazed us. It was no matter who was there, novice or ace, all of them ask. This was a surprise. |
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As well as H22A operation the same pile-ups begun when we used our own calls with additional "5B4/". Everyone marked
great signal strength. It was a driving force to force setting up antennas (hi). |
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Last two days before contest we spent to explore the propagation on Cyprus and nearest beaches. There was no problem to run trough the contest. Only the thing we needed was to choose correct band for operation. Second place was used for monitoring, because it gave lot of QRM for main run and vice versa. When we finished, the result was a little bit more than World Record (4644 QSO and 849 multiplier gave 13,673,146 score points). Disassembling our contest position does not carry so much pleasure as a assembling it. We were encouraged by tremendous result of first attempt and got a mind to continue contesting from Cyprus in the nearest IARU championship. |
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We were troubled by poor condition to USA. Exploring the map we saw the reason of it. It was Olympus mount (2000 meters high) locks the path to USA. Armed with a compass and map of island RA9JX and RZ9UA went on reconnaissance. And at the "end of world" was found a place we can name as "ham's dream". There were not crowds of tourists, less of TV and the roofs are beautiful as well as we had in Limassol. To tell the truth, the place is situated closely to the line of demarcation, which devides Cyprus into two parts (there are Greece and Turkish zones, we were in Greece part of island). But ham radio motivation won the fear to be captured in military action. What does mean to be captured compare with crystal clear air? |
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In late of July 1997 we met again. Four new members expanded previous team (RA9JX, RZ9UA, RZ3BW, and RA3CQ). They were
RA0AM, RV0AR, RA3CW, and YL2KL. A new one antenna (C4XL by FORCE12) was purchased. And go ahead to rise up to the roofs! At this time we built two similar operating positions connected by computer network. |
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