VP2VRX: A Caribbean Contest Adventure - The Full Story
By W3MLJ on behalf of the VP2VRX Team
Wow, what a contest. This all started a year ago in planning of what to do for CQWW SSB. We knew we wanted to do a big operation. We had experience in the US Virgin Islands in the ARRL DX SSB contest in 2024. We had MANY lessons learned as this was our first operation we had ever done by ourselves. We began exploring lots of entities of where to go. We knew we wanted to go somewhere more rare but, still accessible. After all, this is only our 2nd ever operation where we setup our own equipment. We ended up on the British Virgin Islands. We had experience in USVI where we would fly into then ferry over to BVI.
Arrival & Setup
Brayden and I had arrived on the 18th to USVI. I was carrying most of the equipment with myself, so if any baggage got lost, we had time for it to arrive. Seth N4XTT arrived on the 20th after. We then realized we had forgotten a few minor things. Luckily, Jack, W9RFT was arriving on the 21st. He was able to get what we needed. We had setup at the Westin in St. John USVI to test all of our equipment to make sure everything worked and were ready to go.
After testing our radios in St. John we then hopped on a ferry over to Tortola, BVI. We had arranged transportation to our QTH in Belmont Estates in Tortola. We chose this location because it was close to the ocean, but still had about 200ft ASL. On our ride from the ferry to our QTH we realized that this was in an extreme remote part of the island. The road was barely passable. Potholes having to be avoided every few feet.
The Noise Floor Surprise
We arrived and immediately began setup. We setup our hex beam antenna as the first antenna to go up. We then hooked up a radio to test for noise. This was something we were concerned about due to hearing many stories of noise being extremely bad in the Caribbean.
We turned on the radio and to our surprise we had a S0 noise level on 10-20. This was probably some of the lowest noise I have ever seen. We then began to setup our other antennas. 40m also was shocking with a S1 noise level. 80m had S2.
We began operations testing antennas and constructing the shack. Surprisingly, little troubleshooting was needed. We had everything we needed, and no weird issues occurred. The only issue we had which was minor was the K3 we had brought the S meter was off. We had originally planned on this being our main run radio. Some other odd issue we had was the K3 was making a weird RF noise when the CAT cable was plugged into it from the computer. After trying other CAT cables and different computers, the issue was still occurring. We then decided to have our main run radio be the Flex 6300.
Contest Begins - Saturday Operations
It was then time for the contest to start. We started on 15 for 10 minutes and could not get a run going. We then went to 20 and had a big run going for the next few hours. It was surprising on how big the pileups were. We were very pleased that all of our hard work the past few days, and months leading up to the contest, was paying off.
Saturday morning started off with a huge run on 10m. Many times I saw my rate meter go above 400. This was one of the highlights of the contest.
Then we went to 15m around 3pm local time. We believe this was a little late since the band was already wide open. Another issue we ran into was our mult station. We had a DXCommander for our mult station, which could hear just fine but could not be heard on 10-15-20. This cost us big time in the contest since we were very behind on mults.
Evening Operations - Low Bands
We then went to 20 and then to 40 in the evening which had a decent rate. LP in the Caribbean with a vertical not on the beach was a little difficult to be heard. With the non-existent noise we had on 40 made it easy for us to RX but could not be heard very well.
80m was also a vertical we had setup. A mast on top of the house with the wire going down to the ground. This antenna preformed quite well.
160 was non-existent. We were using a sloper antenna, which simply did not work.
Sunday morning we were preparing for a big run. Conditions from the US-EU were quite good and not many people were beaming towards the Caribbean. We struggled to get any runs going, on top of our frequency getting stolen every 5 minutes. The end of the contest neared, and we were very behind on mults. Our QSO totals were quite good, but really lacked in the mult department.
Lessons Learned
Big lessons were learned in this contest on what to do, and what not to do. Overall, we are very happy with how we preformed, and we did what we could do with what we had. This was the first real contest for Jack and Seth. This was Jack's first ever contest as well. From the beginning of the contest to the end of the contest, he had gotten the hang of it and was running 15m on Sunday. Seth, had excelled in running and making sure we always had rate when he was on run.
Lastly, this was an extremely fun contest and lots of lessons were learned during this week and the months prior to the contest. Thank you to everyone who we asked advice from and were more than forthcoming with advice on what to do. Thank you to our sponsors, DXE and many other sponsors.
73,
Michael, W3MLJ on behalf of the VP2VRX team
Send comments to VP2VRX@gmail.com
Pilot Station Comments - KC3VPB
Being the pilot station for VP2VRX was a new experience for me, and there were definitely a lot of lessons learned on my end! This was my first time handling pilot station duties - coordinating communications between the DXpedition team and the ham community, managing the website updates, and keeping everyone informed about the operation's progress.
There's a lot that goes into being a pilot station!
But I was really happy to have helped out and supported the team in this way. It felt great to be part of such an amazing operation, even from my home station in Pennsylvania. I also built and hosted this website, which was a fun project in itself - trying to create something that captured the excitement of the expedition and kept everyone informed.
73 and thanks for following along with us on this journey!
- Caleb, KC3VPB • Pilot Station • Webmaster
October 31, 2025
W3MLJ & KC3VPB
Final Soapbox