AMARC Tigre Island CQ WorldWide SSB Contest

CQ WW SSB 2006 Contest Expedition to: La Tigre Island (NA-060)
Pacific island off the south coast of Honduras
From 22 Oct 2006 until 25 Oct 2006

Please direct any questions or comments to: [email protected]

We have come and gone from La Tigre Island on HF bands, 80m thru 6 meters. Using RTTY, PSK, CW and SSB modes. For those making most QSO's the speacial prizes, such as T-shirts from the Island will be sent. For more detials please check in the DX bullettines. Please meet our team of Operators: Andy EW1AR-NP3D, Javier HR2J, Alex K2PAL, Boris N3SY-UU5SY, Joel KB2PDW, and our friend George The Team

Day1
Day2
Day3
Day4
More Pictures

Day 1 - Sunday October 22nd 2006

We all landed at about 11:30am in San Pedro Sula, gathered our luggage, and met up with Javier outside the airport. We were immediately hit with a wave of about 90 degree heat combined with 100% humidity. We boarded our rental van and were on our way.

We stopped to pick up supplies and took about 8 hours to make it to our destination on the coast across from Tigre Island.

We all piled upon a small boat with all our gear and cruised in choppy seas around Tigre Island to the far side where the hotel was. We arrived at the pier where one usually docks (pictured later) but the boat drivers found it difficult to dock as the tide was low and the seas where angry. The pilot of the boat then decided to ground the boat on the shore as the best method for unloading. Unfortunately that put us in a situation where the boat was grounded with waves crashing onto us and our equipment. We abandoned ship and hauled all our gear to the shore and eventually up the hill to the hotel. The process was even more confusing as the island did not have any power.

We managed to get organized and bring a generator supplied from the hotel online. We managed to setup a quick antenna with limited lighting and makeshift stations in our hotel rooms before succuming to exhaustion from our long day of travel.

Day 2 - Monday October 23rd, 2006

We attended a wonderful breakfast of eggs, beans, plantanes, and coffee at the cabana the next morning. Some of us took some trips into town for some supplies and noticed 2 Honduran soldiers that were part of the local naval base and were stationed to protect sea turtle eggs in the area. We also discovered they expected power to the island to be restored by early afternoon.

Throughout the day we adapted to the heat, rain, and bugs, discovering we not only shared our surroundings with ants, mosquitos and the like but also scorpions.

At around 2pm while at lunch the power came back on much to our delight. We continued to setup various antennae and fine tune our stations. Unfortunatley a power supply was destroyed from the dip in the drink while unloading the boat the night before. Our 1.5 kw amplifier, however, somehow survived the ordeal unscathed. We operated throughout the evening as well as chatting and bonding over some nice cocktails.

Alex doing RTTY

Andy (Left) and Javier (Right) on USB

Boris operating CW

Joel on USB.JPG

Day 3 - Tuesday October 24rd, 2006

We further improved our antennas and added a few more this day. At lunch We were even treated to some traditional Russian music and singing from our 3 Russian operators.

Joel Boris and Alex at lunch

George and Andy at lunch

We operated throughout the day until the evening, right before we were about to go to dinner, the heavens opened up and it began to downpour. At first it was fascinating with the sheer quantity of water, but soon the power went out on the island and we were left in the dark. Eventually rain subsided some and we made our way to the cabana. The hotel staff went above and beyond the call of duty staying to serve us dinner by lamplight before returning home to their families. They have our sincere gratitude for everything they did for us during our stay. We managed to operate for an hour or so more after dinner until our generator ran out of gasoline.

Day 4 - Wednesday October 25rd, 2006

The following morning Javier, Joel, and George woke up at 4am to begin the journey back to San Pedro Sula while Boris, Alex, and Andy remained at the site. The travellers arrived at Javier's house about noon and loaded a generator, power strips, fans, extension cords, and other equipment into the vehicle. George and Joel remained in San Pedro for a return flight back to the US the following day while Javier made the trek back to Tigre Island with his signifcant other.

To be continued...

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