The Call We Won the World With: NN3W Goes to the Caymans as ZF2B

Contest Weekend · CQ WW SSB, October 24-25

Richard, NN3W, is a Greyline owner in Virginia. On October 24 he will be on a beach in Grand Cayman, single operator, low power, under a call sign that means something to both of us: ZF2B. In 2023 Richard and I operated that call as a two-man low-power team in CQ World Wide SSB. We beat the old North American record by forty percent and won the world. This year he goes back alone. Expect great things.

ZF2B, 2023. The experimental two-element vertical array on the sand, pointed at Europe. The Caribbean Sea is the ground system.

Why the Caribbean, and why a vertical

Every serious contester knows the Caribbean is a loud neighborhood. The reason is not the stations. It is the water.

A vertical antenna works with its mirror image in the ground, and how good that mirror is depends on what the ground is made of. Average soil is a poor conductor. Sea water is about a thousand times better. The ARRL Antenna Book and Robert Zavrel, W7SX, both put numbers on it in their chapters on ground effects: over salt water, a vertical's low-angle lobe, the one that reaches across an ocean, fills in almost completely.

The other contender: the tower and Yagi stack at the ZF2B oceanfront station. Serious iron, and the antenna the beach vertical beat on 10 meters.

We measured it. That 2023 weekend the station had this tall stack of Yagis and our verticals on the beach, so we ran them side by side on 10 meters with an A/B switch. The vertical won by about ten decibels, three S-units, and at times by more. On tape, no narration needed:

That is why the island stations you hear running Europe and the States at the same time are so often verticals: a single pole, feet from the tide line, doing what a tower cannot. Richard's Virginia antenna is a 28-foot Greyline DX Vertical. The physics he takes to Cayman is the same physics, with a better mirror. The full 2023 story, with more pictures, is here.

What to listen for

Zone 8, Cayman Islands. Low power means Richard is working the people who can hear him, and a single operator means he sleeps sometimes, so the openings matter. Listen for ZF2B on 20 by day, and on 40 and 80 after dark on the East Coast. If you hear him, give him a contact and a cheer. He will know who you are.

And remember the math from the Net: a Caribbean multiplier at 0400Z is worth about five contacts. From the other side of the exchange, every one of you who works him is one of his.

The friendly fire

Mitch, K7RL, who set the W7 record with me in 2011 through a windstorm and a power outage, is on the air from his cliff on Camano Island. I will be on the air too, with old friends, after a record of my own. Where from is my secret until the log is in. That is the annual rivalry, and it is the hobby at its best: the same people, every October, trying to beat each other and cheering when they do.

The Clubhouse runs all weekend: live cluster, solar numbers, both auroral ovals. Post your score at 3830 afterward, however small, and reply to any Net email with your best contact. The best ones end up here.

Ham Radio is fun again! Pass it on... 73, Jon KL2A