2012 - 2019 PJ4VHF on Bonaire
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In September 2011 I moved to Bonaire to begin my overseas assignment with TWR. I was a broadcast engineer at the 100kW AM station on 800kHz. During the period 2012-2018, I was heavily involved in the design and upgrade of the station to 440kW output. It is now the highers power radio station in the Western Hemisphere. I relocated to Brownsville, TX in 2019, assuming a role of global engineering support for TWR.
The Bureau of Telecommunications was kind enough to approve my request for the special callsign PJ4VHF.
The room addition for my shack and workshop was completed in early 2012, and shack assembly began. I went on the air of February 14, 2012 with a minimal station just to get on the using the trusty old FT-1000D and a restored Cushcraft AP8 vertical (a gift from K1MIJ). Even with just 2 radials per band initially, the antenna did a great job getting me on the air while station assembly continued.
Summer 2012 saw the installation of a small tower at my home QTH. It is only 30' tall, with a 13' mast, but supports quite an array of VHF antennas. There is an M2 6M5X on 6m, a pair of stacked Cushcraft 13B2 yagis on 2m, and an M2 43-9WL on 70cm. I am running 100 watts on all bands currently. A lot of 6m TEP has been worked to South America, a few African stations, and some winter Es to the US and Cayman Islands. I have also worked some 2m TEP in PY and LU. Work is underway to improve the antennas with Vertical arrays on 2m and 70cm for tropo ducting towards Europe and the US. It may be that I have to build another shack at my work location where there is virtually no power line noise on VHF. It is typically S5-9 here at home.
My prime focus on VHF from Bonaire has been trans-oceanic ducting. There is not much 2m SSB activity around the Caribbean, but a lot of stations can be worked through 2m FM repeaters. Puerto Rico (KP4) and the US Virgin Islands (KP2) were relatively common until Hurricane Maria in 2017 destroyed most of the repeaters there. Jamaica was another hot spot of activity. A pair of 12-element Directive Systems yagis were used fro vertical polarization. That tower also housed the 70cm crossed yagi and the 1296 horizontal yagi.
The high point of trans-oceanic ducting was on the evening of May 6, 2015 when the D4C/B beacon was copied loud and clear from Cape Verde Islands. The beacon signal was about 10dB out of the noise on CW. The D4C/B beacon at that time ran 20W into a 5-element yagi. The station at PJ4VHF was the pair of 13-element Cushcraft 13B2 yagis seen above and a Kenwood TS-2000. The beacon then was a simple beacon without any QSO capability. The D4C site is a contest station that is unmanned much of the time. It has since been upgraded to a fully remote-controlled voice and digital mode remote base so two-way contacts are hoped for the next time the band opens. I also built them a 600 Watt output based on a Larcan IPA2 power module.
The new fixed large vertical array yagi system was installed at the TWR AM radio station transmitter site in early 2018. Except for a 440kW medium wave transmitter, this site is radio quiet with buried power lines. The antenna array consists of eight 5-element yagis designed by Lionel VE7BQH. They are stacked vertically in a 1x8 stack resulting in an e-plane -3dB beamwidth of 55 degrees. This lobe encompasses Portugal to Senegal. Remote base capability is being added to this station with 600W RF out.