good news!!

My contesting invariably is to do a single band entry on one of the three higher bands due to the very small footprint of my property, the low bands are my nemesis. Despite that my favourite contest on the calendar is Beru, I may have poor LF antennas,  it may be slow at times, it may be frustrating due to propagation but it produces the ultimate challenge in terms of skill and strategy and perhaps, one day, I shall master at least one of those. I was very pleased to see a host of new calls that I don’t recall before – still many stalwarts of the G3 era but many more G0, G6, G&, M0, M3, keep them coming and Beru shall not die.

So what did 2015 throw at us? For a start band cndx were very poor. On HF, VE (and Oceana on 15/20m LP Sunday am) the dx stns were just not there. 15/20 had high level noise, 10m was quieter but not so productive for dx. 40m was also generally poor and together with 80m the MUF fell below those bands and after 0100z there was little to be heard. Our sunrise is too early to benefit from LP 40/80m from Oceania so there is no morning benefit from those bands, or perhaps better LF antennas could tell me something different!.

Because of the poor cndx I found S&P very frustrating with not a lot to show for it although I spent a deal of time at it and later read about an A35, 9V!, VK5/7 etc being worked  that I never came across. I did manage VP9 on 4 bands and J34 on 3 bands but Caribbean,ZS and C5 were very weak and always a struggle. Also weak was Alan in 5X, he called me on 3 bands yet I never came across him one time in all my S&P. All of Africa is usually a steal from here. V5 was never strong but we made 4 bands, thanks for sticking with me on 40m Nigel.

Before going to 80m I had probably gathered the highest no of 4 banders ever and had high hopes for a fistful of 5 banders  (Sorry Roger, I was looking for SXW especially!). Horror of horrors – the band was crammed full of East/ Central Europeans doing a new ‘Tesler' contest. There was always an Ukranian affair in previous years which was a nuisance but at least that ceased at midnight, this one was not due to end until 8.00am! This occasion the 9A1AA ES6 etc big contest guns were out, the band was a complete mess as we are so relatively close for that band. I just could not find a space to call, if I did I was soon seen off in probably less than one minute. I could hear very few Beru stns, notable cq’ers who made it through the noise more consistently were the usual suspects ‘3BJ, G4BJM,  G4FNL’ G4BUO, G5LP. M0DHO. I had to stick with it to make some sort of show and managed a few more UK and some VE with greater difficulty. I did hear VP9 but Mike was buried under the ‘Teslers'. I don’t like to blast through others on the same qrg but my small amp would do little blasting, a toothpick storming the Bastille comes to mind. I also have to admit that whilst I did not cq down below 3510, tempting as it was so quiet and empty down there, I did answer two or three Beru running stns down there and wondered if I would be penalised, deciding that I was not alone I did a WFWL. Total q’s on 80m was a miserable 28 with only 7 bonus’s

As we saw, that new Africa contest was a non event, I heard only a couple of stns calling for Africa. As it was to be work allcomers I did anticipate some more than usual aggravation from guys looking for a mult but in fact it was no worse than previous years. Actually I was grateful to one of them. Early Sunday am I had been calling into a dead band on 10m with no response and about to give up when a solitary JA called, so I stuck with it and raised a few weak VK’s 2/3/6. Another surprise was a call from G3SJX at 0620, the next UK stn was heard there  about 2 hours later.

Did I enjoy it?, as they say ‘You bet’,  Do I want Skimmer, Cluster, RBN? – No.  SO2R? maybe, but I can’t do it usefully, guess I am too old to learn multi tasking. One thing for sure – after looking through my CQWW SSB log report I really must, at least try, to learn to touch type to reduce those busted calls and reports!

Final totals were – 24 hr High Power, Unassisted.  873 qso’s after dupes with 187 bonus inc 15 HQ stns – Total points – 8080. I wonder how many fat finger errors will show up after the log check report?

73
Brian C4Z / 5B4AIZ.

Having entered Beru for many years as a serious contestant from UK and
other pink bits I thought it time to volunteer to give points away for a
change. Presumably, judging from the speed my offer was seized upon, no
one else thought that way! We started the weekend not knowing what to
expect – after the AFS fracas last week would there be much activity?
Would the SARL event cause big problems? Not wanting to let Bob and
other Beru stalwarts down we had decided to carry on as normal.

No Mega-station here – my home station is a “classic” tri-bander and
wires set-up, with an aged FT1000mp and a shiny new KPA500 Linear. The
beam is an A4s, with the extended driven element for 40m. For 80m I have
a near-vertical which slopes from the top of the 55 ft tower to a corner
of the garden. Despite not having much space for radials this is
surprisingly good for DX but several S-points down on a dipole for UK
stations. Hence I also have a dipole at 70 feet for that band. This
set-up was enough to make us the leading G multi-op station last year.
We used my “reserve” FT1000D for some spotting.

Operating was shared with my neighbour, G4HVC, who last year helped me
with the multi-op entry. We did toy with the idea of a multi-two effort,
as he also has a similar antenna set up as me at his QTH less than 100
yards away. However we were informed that the HQ station had to comply
with the multi-op rule regarding a single transmitted signal. Since the
HQ station is not actually competing with anybody, but trying to
maximise the number of points given away, perhaps the Commttee would
reconsider this for the future. Interlocking the stations as for HF NFD
would have been a possibility, but as we have both been hospitalised
recently we didn’t have time to progress that idea. We would of course
have had to specifically request the NoV be applied to both QTHs. We had
interlinked our stations previously, for a multi-single entry in CQWW
RTTY, all our equipment being easily within the radius allowed by CQ.

To be seeking out other UK stations seemed a bit odd at first,
especially on the higher bands. It was interesting that on 10m and 15m
most UK stations were very weak as expected, but conversely many were
very loud on 20m. In terms of “normal” Beru QSOs, 10m was significantly
down on last year.

We did have a very high noise level on 10m which had not been present in
the days before the contest, still not certain of the source. So if you
could hear us but not get a response on 10m our apologies. We were very
frustrated, as we could see from RBN reports that we were radiating OK
and would like to know how others fared on 10m.

Conditions seemed quite good on the other bands, including on 80m during
the night. The 20m opening to ZL and then VK at around 04:00 was
present again this year, and some of those signals were very loud
against a quiet background. The low-band dawn path to VK didn’t seem as
good as usual, but of course we were being called by strong UK stations
which might have masked some callers. High spots on 20 were working
Tonga and North Cook, I’ve probably never worked either of those in Beru
before.

Some sixteen UK stations worked us on five bands, but many more had us
on four, 10m usually being the one missed. In total we made 715 QSOs,
about half being with UK. On 80m the majority were with G, but we did
manage 28 DX contacts, about the number I normally achieve. Sadly none
of the African stations were worked on 80m.

In general a fun weekend, but I think I will go back to making a normal
entry in future. The DX-er in me wanted to concentrate on finding the
bonuses, especially on the low bands!

Thanks as ever to the Travellers, without whom the Contest would lose a
lot of its unique flavour. Possibly I will be tempted to re-activate
J88DR next year – my antennas and rotator are still there.

We logged with N1MM, which allows a station to work other stations in
the same Commonwalth Call Area as long as the sent exchange incudes
“HQ”. As usual it was flawless. A second, networked, PC was provided at
the spotting position.

Band QSO Call Areas

80 115 23
40 153 33
20 212 71
15 174 59
10 55 26

There didn’t seem to be much activity generated by the SARL non-event,
so we probably need not fear that in the future. However the TARA
contest on 80m was another matter. That was the cause of us spending an
hour on 3509 kHz. We couldn’t find a slot above, and with some
trepidation went below 3510. We had noted that other Beru stations had
done the same and figured that many UK stations in the 12 hour classes
were probably waiting to bag our bonus points before closing down.
Hopefully the adjudicator will be tolerant as we as a non-competitor did
not do it to benefit our own score and the TARA QRM was probably not
envisaged. We did QSY above 3510 as soon as we found a free channel.

73 Dave G3TBK

At the other end of the scale I decided to do a casual S&P entry from the
new QTH using 100W and my trusty HF9V vertical. Operation was roughly 10
hours duration.

Strangely enough I didn’t hear any ZL stations but the regular VK2,3 and 6s
were around.

VU2PTT was loud on 40 but he was having problems hearing. Went to bed at
midnight so didn’t sample 80M this year.

129Q 102 CCA and 5 HQ stations.

N1MM+ scored 2,760 but the scoring anomaly will reduce that slightly.

Thanks to all the travellers out there and I agree that the AF contest
seemed to be a damp squib. I only heard a couple of non BERU ZS stations.

73

Colin, G3PSM

Hello all

Summary below

80m 34/15

40m 134/45

20m 219/53

15m 155/45

10m 183/30

725 Q’s 188 Bonus, Claimed Score 7385

73’s Kev

VK6LW

G’day everyone

Great to hear the reports and ‘war stories’ – and sorry to hear Phil VK6GX’s one about the stomach bug. Ouch Phil! – hope you feel better.

As Kevin VK6LW said, 10 and 15m were good at the start of the contest into the UK, but very poor on 15m/virtually non-existent on 10m on the Sunday.  Years ago, Kev taught me that one should always start on the highest band that is open and work your way down, on the basis that Murphy’s Law of Contesting states that if you assumed the same good conditions that existed at the start of the contest would be there at the end, this would automatically not prove to the case.  This CC was a very good case in point – and glad I started on 10 and 15m!

With the prevailing conditions and Murphy’s Law problems, I was pleased with my score of 5,370 points . Not a patch on the previous year’s score of 11,597, but then conditions and Murphy were very different last year.

Owing to galahs chewing holes in my shorty 40m Moxon beam’s capacity hats, the extensive repairs (and galah-proofing) to them and then getting the tower back up and sorted took me until a few day’s before the contest. Until the contest started I hadn’t turned the beam fully and, when I did (after dark…)  I found that the 80m inv vee dipole snagged onto the 2-ele HF delta loop and stopped the tower moving any further west than due north. This meant that after the first two hours (when turning the beam miraculously missed the dipole) I couldn’t turn my beams NW towards Europe for the rest of the night, being stuck beaming north until the sun started to come up and I could see to untangle the mess (did try and fix it by torchlight, but didn’t get far).  The two beams worked, but were not in the optimum direction during the hours of darkness and the 80m dipole had a high SWR.

My second dose of Murphy happened at the start of the last hour of the contest, when I went to 40m to clean up some multipliers and found that whenever I transmitted, RF apparently got into the external keyer and subsequently stopped the keyer stone-dead. As a result, 40m became a ‘no-go’ zone, which cost me points.  Why this suddenly started to happen at the end of the contest beats me, but on the other hand at least it didn’t happen earlier!

My summary is made up of 465 QSOs with 152 bonuses and 9 dupes – 80m 22 QSOs with 16 bonuses, 40m 98 QSOs with 38 bonuses, 20m (definitely the money band) 215 QSOs with 56 bonuses, 15m 79 QSOs with 36 bonuses and 10m 51 QSOs with 12 bonuses.

Transceiver was the Elecraft K3 and antennas were a 2ele delta loop on 20/15/10 at 20 m high, 2-ele shorty 40m Moxon at 20 m on the same boom (fits into a smaller footprint than a 20m 3-ele) and an 80m inverted vee dipole with apex at 27 m.

The Canadians went out very determined to win and, on the basis of the numbers they were exchanging, they deserve to win and I’d be very surprised if they don’t.  Thanks to everyone for turning out and giving it a shake.  Whatever happens, we certainly went down fighting. Don’t think luck or Murphy was exactly with us this year!!  Many many thanks for Brian VK3MI for all his hard work in getting VK Team 2 up and running.

Vy 73

Steve, VK6VZ