QSL card in the Spotlight: CY9C - St. Paul Island, IOTA NA-094

Last edited: 25.07.2017

Here's a beautiful folded QSL card received recently for my 40m CW contact with the CY9C DXpedition on St. Paul Island, IOTA NA-094.

St. Paul Island lies about 25 kilometres off the northern tip of Nova Scotia, Canada on the border of the North Atlantic and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. St. Paul is a rugged island of approximately 5 kilometres long and 2 kilometres wide. The island is surrounded by rockface cliffs and is uninhabited. Due to fog and the often extreme and unpredictable weather conditions in the area, the rocky cliffs of the island in the past centuries have seen numerous catastrophic ship wrecks, and therefore the island sometimes is also nicknamed The Graveyard of the Gulf.

You can find a huge amount of information about this fascinating island on www.stpaulisland.net. On this site there's also a separate section with a "QSL Museum" with historical QSL cards of amateur radio stations having been active from St. Paul Island in the past and as recent as 2012, as well as a section with links and other information about various other CY9 DXpeditions.

(source)

(source)

The CY9C DXpedition was active from two operational sites: Atlantic Cove and Northeast Point. Actually, the Northeast Point is a separate small island of just a few acres in size and separated from the main island by a small strip of water.
According to Phil McBride, VA3QR, one of the operators of the DXpedition, my 40m CW contact was with operator K4ZLE at the Atlantic Cove site. During the DXpedition, VA3QR kept a very nice daily blog which can be found here. You can read about mysteriously disappearing chartered boat captains, logistical problems, nasty storms, blown down tents, fog systems, and the other daily events that made this DXpedition quite the challenge and adventure.

Atlantic Cove, St. Paul Island (source)

Beside a chartered boat, the CY9C team also had the luxury of having to their disposal a helicopter to transport equipment and team members to and from the island. The helicopter is owned by team member N2IEN and can be seen on the QSL card. There's no way that a boat can get equipment to the Northeast Point, so all gear for this site had to be ferried by the chopper. Also, along with gear, generator fuel, and supplies, frequently USB sticks with the log of the operators at Atlantic Cove were flown from the Atlantic Cove site to the Northeast Point where VA3QR could then upload it to Clublog via a cellular internet connection with either the Newfoundland or Nova Scotia mainland, that's not clear to me. There was no cellular coverage at the Atlantic Cove site.

Northeast Point, St. Paul Island (source)

St. Paul Island is a separate DXCC entity. It's number 72 on the DXCC Most Wanted List of Clublog (no surprise, North Korea is number 1). Do not misunderstand me, I'm glad St. Paul is a DXCC entity, and I don't want to have it changed, but I'm really curious as to why it is. The island is part of Nova Scotia, Canada, and it's relatively close to the coast of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, so from my point of view there's not really a clear political or geographical distinctiveness. Maybe one of my blog readers can shed some light on the underlying reasons for St. Paul being on the DXCC list. Again, do not misunderstand me, I'm not promoting here to have it removed from the list, because as far as I'm concerned, the more DXCC entities the better!

Addendum 25.07.2017
The complete story, written by the expedition members themselves, can now be found here.


See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Paul_Island_(Nova_Scotia)
http://www.cy9dxpedition.com/
http://dx-world.net/cy9c-st-paul-island/