6Y5 DXPedition
By Keith Doughty, WU0H
Special to The ARS Sojourner
I operated my SW30 QRP rig in four different portable locations throughtout Jamaica.  The transceiver had approximately one watt output power from a gel cell and two D-cells in series, about 15 V.  The antenna was a home-brew 30M dipole made of stereo wire and mini coax.  I operated from Mandeville, a mountain city of about 50,000 people at 2,000 feet in Manchester Parish, Great Bay on the South coast, Port Antonio, an old banana port of 14,000 people on the east coast and Negril, on the extreme west coast.  We travelled through all 14 parishes.

For perspective, Jamaica is about 4,400 square miles with 2.6 million people and, in 1989 (according to my most recent DX callbook) had 158 hams.  Connecticutt had 27,619 hams then and still has slightly over 3.1 million people living on 5014 square miles.

The Hotel Astra, Mandeville, February 14

Villa at Great Bay, February 15 - 17

My dipole can't be seen in the above pic, but it's up about 20 feet in the coconut palm in front of me. 

Following three nights up in the mountains at Mandeville and then three on the South coast at Great Bay, we went through Mandeville again, May Pen, Spanish Town, Kingston and Morant Bay to Port Antonio on the East coast.  Here is the DeMontevin Lodge Hotel, where we stayed for three nights.  We were in the turret room on the right of the picture and my antenna was erected from a third floor room with the help of the manager's grandson.  Unfortunately, my antenna ends were stolen after only one night (and only one QSO) and when I went to replace the stereo wire, I found out why:  it is almost impossible to find stereo wire in Jamaica.

And here are Heartbeat Cottages, Negril, February 21 - 23

The transport:  The "Muskrat."  No other rental party will scare him as badly as we did.

The harbour at Port Antonio taken from the Bonny View plantation.

In all, 14 QSOs, including one not listed at Mnadeville, when Joop used a QRP rig.  I worked seven countries, but only two states; FL and NJ.  When I couldn't find stereo wire, in Negril I bought some #12 gauge wire at a hardware store, used Bill Orr's magic equation of 468 divided by frequency for a quarter-wave dipole and it seemed to work even better than my stereo wire.  The original antenna was constructed by N0SXX, another ARS member.

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Keith was first licensed in March, 1969 as WN0WXJ. He is 48 and a structural
firefighter. His interests these days are almost solely QRP CW.

kdoughty@gwtc.net