Working Costa Rica Bicentennial Special Station TI200I

From September 1 to September 30, 2021

Costa Rica, located in the center of the American continent, celebrates 200 years of Independence.

From 09-Sep through 15-Sep, I was able to make several contacts on multiple HF bands with the Special Event Station TI200I using digital FT8.

Equipment:

• Yaesu FT-991 HF transceiver (40w – 90w)
• MFJ-933 automatic antenna tuner
• Diamond SX-600 dual range power / SWR meter
• MFJ G5RV & Radiowavz OCF 80 antennas
• 70′ of RG6 coax to external grounding block & 100′ of RG/8U to long wire antennas
• WSJT-X software for Mac OSx

Making North-South contacts can be tricky on HF, but I was a able to confirm QSO’s with the stations operating in Costa Rica in just about every session. Most of the time, contact could be made under 50 watts of power. I did have to push the 991 to near max power to complete a couple of the contacts, which I seldom need to do.

PSK Reporter was a helpful tool for locating the bands and protocols the stations were working.