Editor’s Note: Every month, DX Engineering features QSL cards from our team members’ personal collections. To highlight upcoming DXpeditions, we’ll be displaying a few of our favorite cards along with details about what it took to make these contacts. We’re excited to share some of the special cards pulled from the thousands we’ve received over the years. We look forward to seeing your cards as well!
Sint Maarten (PJ7) QRV in February and March
Sint Maarten, a constituent country in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, is scheduled to be active from February 27 to March 27. The PJ7AA DXpedition by AA9A from this island (IOTA NA-105) in the Caribbean Sea will be operating on 80 through 10M SSB, CW, and FT8. As of January, Sint Maarten was the 140th Most Wanted DXCC Entity per Clublog.
The 13-square-mile island (population 41,400) is part of the Dutch Caribbean, also known as the Dutch West Indies. On September 6, 2017, Hurricane Irma made landfall on Sint Maarten, destroying nearly three-fourths of its infrastructure and dealing a major blow to the country’s economy, which is largely dependent on tourism from the frequent arrival of cruise ships that stop in Philipsburg Harbour.
PJ7E
Dave, K8DV, DX Engineering technical/customer support specialist, made 22 CW, RTTY, and SSB contacts with the October 2010 German DX Foundation’s PJ7E DXpedition. Operators during the event recorded 74,435 QSOs (22,023 unique) during 11 days of “loud and huge pileups,” as described by team members Joe Pater, W8GEX, and Craig Thompson, K9CT, in their rundown of the venture. The DXpedition, which featured separate sites for SSB/RTTY and CW stations, coincided with the deletion of four DXCC entities on 10-10-10, the day the Netherland Antilles was formally dissolved. This led to the creation of the DXCC entities of Sint Maarten, Bonaire, Curacao, and Saba/St. Eustatius. Below is the QSL card from PJ7E.
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