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| For this 30th anniversary trip to Anguilla, VP2EN stayed at Milly's Inn, which can be seen in the foreground. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| VP2EN : Anguilla revisited after 30 years The callsign VP2EN had first been issued to G3TXF in 1973. It was for a visit made to Anguilla after participating in the October 1973 CQWW SSB Contest as one of the multi-op FG0ZZ/FS7 team from French St Martin (FS). Anguilla VP2E lies just a few miles from FS. While mulling over "somewhere interesting to go" for the 2003 Commonwealth Contest [BERU], a return visit to Anguilla (thirty years on) seemed like a good idea. An exchange of FAXes and E-mails with the Telecom Officer in Anguilla confirmed that I could get the old VP2EN callsign re-issued. That was a good start. A check of various websites indicated that Milly's Inn on Anguilla was both a good radio location and a "ham-friendly" place to stay. We booked up for a week to include this year's BERU. The journey out to VP2E was via Antigua and St Martin. There is a frequent ferry service across from Marigot, the capital of French St Martin, to Blowing Point on Anguilla. The crossing takes about 25 minutes. The Milly's Inn location turned out to be excellent in all respects. It is on a north-facing slope just above the excellent Shoal Bay beach. The accommodation at Milly's Inn comprises four spacious self-catering apartments. As this was to be a relatively 'low-key' operation, I took just an R-7000 vertical, an 80m dipole and a barefoot TS-50. The 80m dipole was suspended from one corner of the first floor balcony and run out across the garden. Although the apex was at only about 25ft, being on a gentle slope straight down into the sea made a huge difference. Some 50 G's were worked on 80m with this low-slung dipole and 100w during BERU. The R-7000 vertical was perched at the side of the house. There would be adequate space around Milly's Inn for a couple of pole mounted beams as well as some LF antennas. Although for a major contest effort you would probably need to ensure that the other apartments were either unoccupied or were occupied by fellow hams! The only minor "down-side" to Milly's Inn as a location on Anguilla is the fact that it is situated just one kilometre down the road from the highly visible VP2EC super-station which has four huge towers, multiple stacked HF beams and what looks like a full-size rotary 80m dipole on a 200ft tower with the ocean some 350ft directly below. All this mega-station antenna hardware towering over you from just down the road makes your simple vertical feel really small! 650 QSOs were made by VP2EN during BERU. Once the Commonwealth Contest was over, the VP2EN operation focused on the WARC bands where demand for Anguilla VP2E was likely to be the greatest. In total 6,000 QSOs were made in six days operating as VP2EN. |
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| <-- 2003 VP2EN QSOs |  |
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| 1973 VP2EN QSL ---> | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 1973 VP2EN QSOs : | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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