At home, Andy and Irwin operate their ham radios independently under their Federal Communications Commission-licensed call signs, KD3RF and KD3TB, respectively. The two also join forces as part of the contesting group VE2DXY for the annual CQ World Wide Single Sideband competition.

This year, the VE2DXY team will be operated by Andy Vavra KD3RF, Irwin Darack KD3TB, Bill Ballantine K3FMQ, Ken Nicely N3PSJ and Sebastien Jean VE2GTZ.

The world in zones

Andy: For the purposes of the CQ World Wide Single Sideband competition, the world is broken into 40 zones based on longitude and latitude. See a worldwide zone map here.

For the contest, each year we activate Zone 2 from the small town of Sept Îles in northern Quebec as a multi-two team—meaning we have two radios and two operators on air at the same time. The contest scores are calculated by taking the number of zones contacted, multiplied by the number of countries, multiplied by the number of contacts, so it’s very important for participants in the competition to contact as many zones as possible. Our team typically makes several thousand contacts during the contest and scores in the 2-million point range.

Since there are only 3 or 4 stations active at any given time in remote Zone 2, our operation is a very rare and desirable station to contact. It’s exciting to be the one zone in the world that everyone must contact for the competition.

Compare this to the United States, in Zones 3, 4 and 5, where there are approximately 500,000 hams (although not all of them participate in the competition). Do you think hams in other parts of the world have trouble making contact with hams in one of these three U.S. zones? Probably not. But they all need a contact in Zone 2!

Irwin: Operating from Zone 2 also gives us an opportunity to test new ideas, and proves we can set up and run a fully operating station anywhere in the world. Our travels to Zone 2 take us through some of the most beautiful scenery in northern U.S. and Canada.

In addition, both Andy and I enjoy building and testing different antenna designs. Because our storage is limited when traveling, we are constantly looking for ways to build antennas that improve performance without taking up too much space. We also must be cognizant of weather conditions in Northern Quebec this time of year when designing and packing equipment. We have had snow, sleet, freezing rain and even hurricane-force winds.

Recent accomplishments

Andy: We just received notification from CQ Magazine that our 2008 team took first place for Zone 2 in the 2008 CQWW SSB contest. We also placed No.18 in all of North America and No. 2 in all of Canada.

This is a great accomplishment for our team. For 2009, we have two additional operators, Ken N3PSJ and Sebastien Jean VE2GTZ, and we hope to improve on last years’ performance.

Hitting the road

Andy: On October 22, our VE2DXY team will head to Zone 2 in Canada for the 2009 CQWW SSB competition. We just purchased a new HP MediaSmart Home Server to give our team remote access for file sharing, etc.

We will also be trying out “on the road” GPS navigation using our HP computers and a commercially available software package from DeLorme. The sponsor of the CQWW competition asked that we document our station’s exact position by longitude and latitude using GPS to alleviate any doubt that we are indeed north of the 50th parallel in Zone 2.

We tested the GPS system this afternoon on Irwin's HP laptop. It worked perfectly and we were able to read the precise longitude and latitude of his home location.