Staying as Surfsong
Here is the house called Surfsong. It is offered to hams for rent via Amy Beam. As you can see it’s a very big house. Plenty of room for our party of 4.
The location is on the Eastern Side which faces the Atlantic Ocean. It is quiet and far away from all the tourist items. You really need a car to get around. Bring a GPS if you have one, the roads are poorly marked (that is an understatement, they are not marked at all).
The ham shack is very nice and air conditioned (the only room in the house that is). There is always plenty of Ocean breeze to keep the rest of the house tolerable.
Arriving
Rental House
Beautiful Beaches
Departure
8P9DF QSL Card
QSL By KB3IFH
Getting a License in Barbados
A U.S. ham who also resides in Barbados made all the arrangement for my license. He is a friend of the owner of the property we rented.
Click here for the full 8-page license
Below is a one page receipt that you are given . . .
8P9DF At His Station
We didn’t have very good luck with the antennas. I know how hard it is to maintain antennas especially in the salty Caribbean so I don’t want to be too critical. However, I do want to explain why my score was very mediocre. The tri-bander was totally out of commission. The vertical tuned perfectly on all bands however nobody heard me. I switched to the coax fed 160m dipole which is up about 35 to 40 feet at the center and heard more stations. So, this was my only antenna for the week with the K3 tuning to the coax.
Even though this was not the optimum contesting set-up, I still had plenty of stations to work and had an enjoyable time.
Customs:
It was a typical Caribbean airport scene: many planes landing at the same time, immigration was busy, and the baggage handlers were in a big hurry to get to the next passenger. This can work in your favor as the customs people tend to feel sorry for the baggage handlers so they don’t ask a lot of questions about your bags (assuming your bags look “normal”).