.: Al Crespo, F5VHJ
I was first licensed in 1963 as WN6FCR and a year later became
WB6FCR.
Contesting started for me in 1964 and I had very modest
results for many years. In the 70's I joined the NCCC and served in various
offices with the club. I started operating outside of the USA in 1968 as 4A0FCR.
It took me until 1979 to again operate outside of the USA as
J6LIR in the 1979 IARU contest. I continued operating from St.Lucia in various
contests until 1982.
I went to the island of Maui in the Hawaiian Islands in 1985
for the IARU Radio sport and finished 4th in the world on phone as WB6FCR/KH6.
This was more fun than being in California. This was the impetus to build a
contest superstation with the help of AH6AZ (now AH6M), I changed calls to WR6R,
AH7G, and finally to 2006 to NH7A. I won lots of single operator plaques in ARRL
DX Phone, CQWW DX and CQ WPX Phone and continued to operate from Maui until
2002. In 2003 the opportunity to operate from Martinique occurred. That year as
TO5A I somehow won a plaque in CQWW DX Phone and have since run up scores in
ARRL DX Phone and CQWPX Phone.
I now operate the ARRL Phone DX contest from that station.
Although this not my favourite contest, since 1986, I have finished in the top
ten single operator class every year except for 1988 and 2003.
In 2004 I became 6W1RY and operated as a Multi-single in the
CQWW Phone contest along with F6BEE(6W1RW) from the roof top of Club Med.
This led to a permanent station being setup with 6W1RW. I have
operated from there in CQWW Phone since 2006. I was again lucky and have been
able to win single operator plaques in the contest.
In 2009 I went back to Hawaii and was able to hook up with
Lloyd (KH6LC) and operated in the CQWPX as a single operator in the Phone
contest. It was a blast to be back in Hawaii, even though the conditions are
still as bad as ever to do a contest from there compared to other parts of the
world. Somewhere along the line I got on the Honor Roll as NH7A when not
contesting.
Over the years I have been very lucky to meet many good people
in amateur radio and have had many enjoyable memories playing radio.
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