Stan and I got to go on our second trip in 1992 - a long time to
wait! This time it was
KHØ - Saipan in February. Snow and 30 degrees F in Michigan and
80 degrees F in KHØ.
1992 found Stan Arnett, AC8W, and I going on a trip
with Eric Wadsworth, VE3RIK, to
the island of Siapan in the Northern Mariana Islands for a contest (of
course!). the 1992
ARRL DX CW Contest.
When we arrived at the airport in KHØ we were met by
Ted Rachwal, K8AQM, (who was
living in Japan with his wife, a teacher, who was on a year long
exchange program), Jeff
Cripps, K8MX, from western MI, and Jeff Benson, N8CC, from Nashville,
MI.
The hotel - The Diamond Hotel - gave us access to
the roof and the JA group who had
operated from the Diamond allowed us to use two of their 4 and 6 foot
tripods to mount
two tribanders. One was a TET 3 element tribander that we left
for the JA's and the other
was a 'cut down for traveling' TA-33jr loaned to us by Jim Sansoterra,
K8JRK. We also had
a Hy Gain DX-88 that Jeff and Jeff brought with them to use on KH2 -
Guam - before and
after operating on Saipan and a wire version of the famous Battle Creek
Special that we
strung from the roof up a flag pole on top of one of the elevator
shafts to the other elevator
shaft in an inverted L configuration.
We could not decide on a call to use for the contest
so we voted to use Stan's call because
he loves QSL cards - the contest call was AHØ/AC8W. The end
result of the contest was
a plaque from the ARRL for first place Multi-2 Oceania.
Five days of operating and four hours of siteseeing
around the island. An excellent mix!