Many thanks to Bob K4RLC who shares this report on mixing vacation with ham radio with us. If you have an article in your head and want to have it posted here, let’s keep this community going while our friend Thomas continues to help his neighbours in the wake of Hurricane Helene in Western North Carolina. Draft up your story in an email with reference points to the pictures you want embedded and their captions, attach photos to the note and send it my way to vincedeon at gmail dot com and note QRPer in the subject line to get my attention.
By Bob Conder K4RLC and V4/K4RLC
Our interest in a trip to Saint Kitts began pre COVID, after my buddy Dale W4AUV and I saw an ad in the back of QST magazine by W5JON, John, for his rental villa with a complete ham radio station on this Caribbean island. What could be wrong with this scenario? Being on a beautiful Caribbean island with a complete ham radio station?
Fast forward almost five years later, when Dale and I, along with our spouses, leave Raleigh for St. Kitts. The timing was really bad for me, as at the same time Western North Carolina was devastated from Hurricane Helene. In the past, I worked with the American Red Cross Disaster Services after hurricanes and tornadoes in my home state, as well as being deployed to the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and Louisiana immediately after Hurricane Katrina. We have friends and family who live in upstate South Carolina and Western North Carolina Including my best friend from high school and his family. All we could do was reach out to them with support, and donate money through reputable organizations such as Samaritan’s Purse Disaster Relief and the American Red Cross.
St. Kitts only has three POTA sites and no SOTA sites. I had hoped to activate at least two of the POTA sites. CW is my preferred modality. These POTA sites had only been activated by phone and dubious digital.
Saint Kitts is an unquestionably beautiful tropical island, but it is still a third world nation. The driving is British style, further complicated by having only three stoplights on the island and roundabouts every few miles. We rented a Honda CRV from Bullseye Rentals, recommended by John W5JON, the owner of the villa. Given the ancient small roads where everybody drives like your drunken old aunt with dementia, this was a good vehicle choice. Since my first and primary activation was to be Brimstone Hill Fortress National Park, a UNESCO site built starting in 1690 with guarded entryways made to fit horse drawn wagons in the 1700’s, we were relieved to have passed up the large Ford Explorer rental in favor of our little Honda SUV that barely made the entryway.
Brimstone Hill Fortress, also known as the Gibraltar of the Caribbean, is an expansive stone fort originally built by the British in 1690 with African slaves. It has been through many modifications over the years, and different owners, but is essentially British. In fact, its construction reminded me of Edinburgh Castle in Scotland. (I was later told that Brimstone was designed and built by the Royal Engineers from the UK). Now, it is a National Park, a POTA site (KN-0003), and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
With Dale driving and me navigating, it took about an hour from our villa on Frigate Bay to find the turn off. (Google Maps has a long time latency there, so you will be past major turns and intersections when Google announces them as ahead !) Then there is a long, narrow winding and climbing road that lets you know you’re gaining altitude. We had to give way to a large dump truck doing construction at the site, and heading down the mountain road directly for us. And please, drive cautiously around hairpin turns, honking your horn, as recommended.
But it was worth it to get to the top. The view is spectacular over the surrounding sea, and you can see why the British and French fought over this strategic position for their forces. There is an orientation movie that explains the history and layout of the fortress, after one pays a modest admission fee to the site. I had seen photographs before our visit and knew where I wanted to take my KH1. I went up to the artillery batteries with the huge cannons that shoot 5 inch balls miles into the ocean, presumably into a French ship. I pulled out the Elecraft KH1. I ran its stock configuration, except for wrapping the counterpoise around one of Her Majesty’s cannons to get a little signal punch. While the KH1 has incredible advantages, it’s no match for the solar flares and ionospheric instability of late, with A indices as high as 57 and Kp at 7+. After several weeks of ionospheric quietude and good HF propagation before we travelled, Ole Sol cranked up and started misbehaving just as we got to Saint Kitts. Nevertheless, Brimstone Fortress was a beautiful historic site from which to call CQ and try to snag stations back in the States.
I did not realize that the operation would lead to meeting interesting people on site. One was a young tour guide who talked with Dale’s YL, Vianne, and was very curious about what I was doing while calling CQ. I was happy to show John the radio and explain ham radio, as he expressed interest in getting licensed. Then, while walking down to the enclosed parade ground, two official-looking gentlemen approached me and asked about ham radio. One was the Park Manager, while the other was the Administrator of the UNESCO site, Percival Hanley. This turned into a very interesting interaction. Percival’s brother Winston, V44AA works with Saint Kitts Emergency Management and is a licensed amateur radio operator. Percival and I had a very high level discussion about amateur radio, especially during emergency operations that his brother does when there are hurricanes and tsunamis caused by earthquakes on this and nearby volcanic islands (eg, Monserrat). Only later did I find out that Percival is also the island’s leading astronomer. I gave him a copy of my QSL card, as I did with young John, and Percival said he would pass it on to his brother, who was in Cuba that week.
Not only did our stay unfortunately coincide with an uptick in solar flares, but also with a somewhat rare heat wave. When the locals on a tropical island say they’re having a heat wave, you can believe there is some serious heat. As someone who’s dermatologist told me “You should live in a bog in Scotland,” this hampered my outdoor radio activity. We did not make the National Park, which mysteriously houses a small carnival like you would see in a county fair. We did visit the Romney Manor Plantation, a former sugar cane plantation started by Thomas Jefferson’s 3rd Great Grandfather Sam. I had fun playing with the KH1 and viewing the lush overgrown plantation.
Later, I did take the KH1 across the Bay known as “The Narrows” to the island of Nevis, accessible via a one hour ferry ride, landing at their capitol city of Charlestown. The smaller island is part of the dual-island government federation and we found it to have somewhat more charm than the larger island of Saint Kitts. Alexander Hamilton was born there and we visited his birthplace. Instead of walking a long way in the heat, we hired a driver who took us to the ornate Botanical Gardens, which was a beautiful rain forest garden with sculpture from India and the South Pacific.
To get up the very steep mountainous incline, our driver and guide Samuel had to turn off the air conditioner in his small Toyota van. But we made it. Dale V4/W4AUV brought his HT along. From the Gardens, he brought up the local Nevis repeater….only to find that it is an IRLP repeater. He had a nice QSO from there with a ham in Portland, Oregon! Just beyond the botanical gardens is the luxurious Montpelier Hotel where Princess Diana and “the Boys” stayed. On the way back to the ferry, Samuel took us to the well-known Sunshine Bar on the beach for lunch. This is where one samples the infamous “Killer Bee” Rum punch, as strong as it sounds. Samuel was born on Nevis and very proud to tell us of his beloved island and it’s history. Needless to say, there was not much radio activity that day.
In our travels to places like Greece last year and Cape Breton Island this year, I realized that my YL, Alanna, was not just tolerant of my radio activities, she was also supportive and encouraging. Unfortunately, not all YLs share this attitude, especially when radio activities take time away from excursions. Accordingly, I cut my portable outside radio time shorter than I might have liked. Back at the Villa, John had a Yaesu FTdx3000D HF/6m Transceiver, a 43 foot vertical, a 20/15/10 beam, and a 6 meter rotateable dipole. There were problems with the beam which need addressing. But the performance of the vertical was amazing! Dale and I worked easily into Europe, including Russia and Lithuania on 40 meter CW and Europe and North America on 20 CW during the day and early evening.
Since I could not really activate POTA, I decided to be a hunter for POTA stations in the US and Canada on 20 meter CW. I could hear and work QRP portable stations running 3 to 5 watts and a small vertical or compromised wire antenna in a park in Quebec and upstate New York. My friend Gary AE4GS has a habit of following up a POTA QSO with an e-mail and suggested I do this. The stations I worked and contacted were very happy to hear from me. One problem was the call sign V4/K4RLC was mostly unknown to the hams I worked. HAMRS would not accept this as a valid call sign. This included VE2AW in Quebec who said he had been licensed for 60 years and had never heard that V4 call. It took a lot of work for folks to copy the V4/xxx callsign correctly. Also, sending V4 stroke was really a bear. I flubbed it up as often as I got it right. It was even hard for Dale, who is a musician and can send errorless at 30 words and up.
The heat never abated and only got worse. It was so hot, in fact, that my iPhone quit working due to overheating at one open-air restaurant. So we never got to activate the other two SOTA sites. Staying cool in the villa’s Infinity Pool or on some of the nearby beautiful Caribbean beaches was a better option. The food was fantastic. The prices were reasonable. The local beer was good. And most of the locals were extremely friendly and fun to talk with, seeming to be happy with living on an island Paradise. There were a few rare exceptions, mostly at the local RAM grocery store. John W5JON has an incredible “ham radio rate” for his villa – for details, see his QRZ page.
So while my POTA activations fell short of expectations, I was really happy to be a hunter for the QRP portable stations back in the US and Canada, who were happy their weak signal was worked by a real DX station. Activating two islands in just two months is rare for me, but it just worked out that we were on wonderful Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia in August. The next islands on our bucket list are the Orkney Islands north of Scotland, where my DNA and I will feel much more at home.
Still keeping friends and family in the disaster areas in Western North Carolina and upstate South Carolina in our thoughts and prayers, and hoping to volunteer to go up and help with clean up and recovery, like I did after Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf with Red Cross Disaster Services. Unfortunately, due to medical issues, I can only give money right now to help legitimate charities who are helping in the disaster areas. I hope and expect many of you reading this are doing the same.
73 de K4RLC V4/K4RLC Bob