Costs

Round trip on American from Cleveland to Curacao and return was $615 in July. It is an easy and comfortable trip: one hop to Miami in an MD-80, and one hop to Curacao in a 727, about two and a quarter hours each. The airport identifier is CUR. Some of the team was able to find airfares lower than $615 by shopping around or by catching sales on the Internet.

Each villa (sleeps six) is $1750 for a week. The manager gave us a bit of a price break on the villas because he seemed very interested in amateur radio. He will also require that we all eat breakfast each day in the resort's restaurant, and these meal costs (about $12 per person per meal) must be paid up front with the villa rental. Please click here for the table that details who is in which room in which villa, and keep an eye on this, as it will change over time.

W0CG (Geoff Howard, 1984 Trares Road, Suffield, Ohio 44260) needs a $500 deposit per operator (or per couple) as soon as you're positive you are coming. If you need to pull out after paying the deposit, we'll refund as much of this as possible after the trip, when all other expenses have all been covered. The refund of the deposit is not guaranteed. Sorry, but I have lost quite a bit of my own money on the VP5FXB and VP5CW trips....

W0CG's worst-case estimate is below. These costs will be significant because we don't have the luxury of access to our equipment which is at Jody's in the Turks and Caicos. We will be rebuilding our stash of gear, gradually, as we buy and store coax, for example. On the plus side, there will be no allocation for a QTH, as we are LIVING in the operating QTH. Also, costs will depend heavily on how big an operation we decide to put on.

CG has spent several thousand dollars out-of-pocket on behalf of the CCC on the last two trips that did not ever get reimbursed (most of Jody's extra charges last year, part of the shipping costs to get the gear to Provo, quite a bit of rental charges that people never fully paid, and the costs associated with going to PJ9 and all of the related expenses of setting this up.) I don't at all mind donating my share and more, but it has been quite a bit over what would be a fair share. I'm not tight, but I've reached the practical limit -- I can't continue to arrange these trips and lose money as fast as I'm losing it. I'm simply running out of money. My rental car was vandalized in July, for example, and I was billed $930 by Avis yesterday for those repairs. Insurance is only going to cover part of this. Thus, I'm asking the group to approve a partial reimbursement of my past and present CCC costs. The "set-aside" is to put some money in reserve to ship all our gear from PJ9 to wherever we eventually buy property. If that turns out to be PJ9 itself, then we'll use that money to buy stuff for the station.

Duty Paid on July 19 in Curacao	$285.00
UPS shipping of coax, rope, and components to N4OKX	$46.48
UPS shipping of coax to N6HR	$58.27
Estimated UPS shipping of AL-1200 case to W9EFL	$15.00
Partial expenses reimbursement to CCC for past trip losses and reserve for the next one	$600.00
PJ9CW special callsign license costs	$89.00
Miscellaneous radio costs on the island (hardware, rope, guy wire, Romex, fittings, anchors....)	$200.00
Telephone costs for calls to Curacao by W0CG	$19.56
Tee shirt order	$195.29
Smartnet internet service on Curacao	$60.00
Set-aside for CCC shipping and storage costs	$150.00
TOTAL (as of 6 October)	$1718.60

As of October 6 we have seven operators, so this above amount will split to $245.51 each. Costs are lots lower thanks to WA8LOW's contributions of coax and other miscellany.

Bottom line is about 550 airfare + 440 lodging + about 250 for shared costs for a total of about $1240. Cheap, for a week-long ham vacation in the tropics!!??