Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2001 07:39:40 -0500

From: Matt Strelow

PI4COM is located 20 miles south of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. It is a real nice contest location along the river Rhein and just few miles from the ocean.

On Saturday of the CQWW-CW contest. PA3EWP wanted to participate on ten meters with his own call part time and he did some operating during the day. After he left between 16:00 and 21:30 utc. The shacks got broken into and all valuable stuff got stolen by unknown suspects. After that they set fire to the operating and sleep/storage shacks of PI4COM. It burned to the ground as you can see in the pictures. Since the set up was a remote site close to the water in the Netherlands insurance was as good as impossible for them or would have been very expensive. Some team members found out about the fire on the 22:30 local news when during the interview with the fire chief, they spotted the antennas in the background. What a way to see your QTH go down.

The members of PI4COM (PA3EWP, PA7FM, PA5ET, PA3DZN, PA3BWD, PB0AIU, PA1ZX, PA3FQA, PA5AT) Worked hard for the last 14 years to get the place to a world class contest station and lost everything but the antennas.

I'm sure that all of you have them in the log. The guys were smart enough to remove transceivers and amps from the remote location. But still they lost the housing (mobile trailers) and all the accessories like, rotor controllers, coax band pass filters, computers and monitors, cabling etc. We all know how much stuff you need in a big operation like this. Plans to put it all back up are in the works. The PI4CC team offered their help with cash and man power as well. Lets help them to rebuild it by donating some money. It doesn't have to be much. Please do what ever you can afford to show them that the contest community worldwide cares about their team. I talked to a few guys on the phone and they wanted to help out. We opened an account on "paypal.com" and also a bank account. We'll collect for them until X-mas and we will then send it to the Netherlands. Unlike many other things like this, every dime will go back into your log too, when you work the new PI4COM. Please give your donation on paypal.com and use kc1xx@rcn.com as the e-mail to receive money. If you prefer to send a check you can do so to PI4COM Fund and send it to my address:

PI4COM Fund

814 Hurricane Hill Road

Mason, NH 03048

To: "Matt Strelow" Subject: Re: PI4COM Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 16:01:21 +0100 Matt - we defintely are going to rebuild ! At this moment we are planning new housings for the shacks as antenna' s are still alive, however all previous shacks are lost... It happened that due to vandalism, some people thought they would enjoy a large fire... Local television informed about the "accident" in their news - as you know it is a remote location and we don't have camera's , hi... So when watching the news at 22:30h local time, we could not believe that it was PI4COM being on TV, and interview with firemen...but it was not a joke... We are not sure, whether we can manage until ARRL - it is a menpower issue and also financial problem for the group... Please see photos:

http://lists.contesting.com/images/80m_shack.JPG
http://lists.contesting.com/images/21.jpg

But we will be back, don't worry - our friends (or competitors, HI) from PI4CC offered big help of menpower also.... this is hamspirit !