Well, that didn’t turn out as I had planned. I was hoping that we’d have the same condx as in ARRL DX SSB last weekend, but obviously that didn’t pan out. I lost my amp early in the second hour and spent the next 3 hours trying to run LP and fix the amp at the same time. I managed to get it working again, but I knew I was falling behind, and with condx the way they were, I lost motivation but kept plugging away. My second radio (TS-850) seems to have lost all sensitivity on 20, 15, and 10m. I couldn’t hearing anything except the loud stations, which I’d already worked, on those bands, which really limited my SO2R work. My log shows no QSOs between 0828 and 0927 despite nearly continuous CQing on 80, 40, or 20. I had 3 QSOs in the final 90 minutes. Last year, I had no QSOs between 0803 and 0904. I see a pattern here :=) I must have been really close to another running station between ~1145 and ~1230 on 20m. I worked ~55 stations in that time, but at least 10 of them called me again later, making me wonder how many of the ~55 were actually calling the other station instead of me. I won’t be surprised if I lose a lot of those QSOs. Here’s a breakdown of some of my log: Raw QSOs Dupes Bonus HQ PTS BCA ————————————————————

80m 55 55 0 18 3 695 12

40m 194 192 2 56 5 2180 27

20m 186 255 13 37 4 2095 23

15m 59 59 0 39 2 1115 25

10m 15 15 0 14 1 375 11 ———————————————————— 591 576 15 164 15 6460 98 Three 5 band QSOs: VA3RAC, VE7CC, VE9CB (Compared to 33 last year as VA3RAC!) HQ Stations: VA3RAC, VE1RAC, VE7RAC, VO1RAC, GB5CC 98 Band Call Areas 411 QSOs in the first 12 hours, 180 in the last 12 hours. G: 396 QSOs with 248 unique stations VE: 94 QSOs with 40 unique stations VK: 25 QSOs with 19 unique stations ZL: 24 QSOs with 11 unique stations 80m G: 36 VE: 14 VK: 1 ZL: 0 40m G: 125 VE: 30 VK: 19 ZL: 8 20m G: 214 VE: 27 VK: 2 ZL: 2 15m G: 21 VE: 17 VK: 2 ZL: 8 10m G: 0 VE: 6 VK: 1 ZL: 5 Still one of my favourite contests! Thanks for all the QSOs and to all the DX travellers who make this contest more interesting! 73, Chris VE3FU / VO2AC

The XYL  and I travelled back to the DX location of Ed VP9GE  again, makes a good break! The Antennas used  were the homebrew ‘suitcase’ multi  wire vertical for 40/20/15/10  and local dipoles  for 80/40. Both have  a fine view north over the atlantic about 150 yards away and 100 feet up  a hill.The rig comes with the shack and is 100w FT920, the max allowed in Bermuda.Due to the CME storm starting conditions were poor, and 10m was dead.Later on they improved  and at dawn 80/40 were good  to everywhere with fast fading to G . Best Dx was T33, and ZM3AB and M1K QRP the gotaways. 20m  was quiet all night except  for all the ZLs lined up, most were worked with a few repeats, then the VKs came up.GM0NAI had  the best signal from UK  to here, and GB5CC was found easilyexcept on 15/10m . I managed to be conscious till 0800 this year, and 20m was still closed then.My keyer kept dropping dits randomly  so apolgies  for some weird sending! The logged Score was 550 QSOs, 1 /10m 35/15m 151/20m 239/40m 121/80m   with 168 bonuses, SD  score is 6095.73 Mike VP9/G3VYI

Hi Bob

I thought I would send you some comments on the BERU.

I was in Team Quake Contesters and we lived up to our name as we had a 4.4 quake one minute after the contest started.  That was enough to get the Adrenalin flowing (and quite helpful since the contest starts at 11pm here)!

As others have no doubt noted it was pretty hard work as conditions were not great.  I was running a multiband Inverted L and 300w but struggled a lot of the time.  No Africans were heard (perhaps not surprising with my set up) but only one Caribbean made the log, ZF2CA, which was surprising.  I was really hoping to snag VP9/G3YVI as that would have been a new country for me but I never heard him.

Calling CQ I struggled to pick out calls at times, especially on 40m where I could tell there were a lot of guys calling me who I simply could not identify – sorry!

In the end for about 12 hours operating I managed 150 Qs which seems about on a par with the other ZLs.  Really high scores simply don’t happen down here when you are so far from the action.

The attraction of this contest for me is working the DX without competition for once – so thanks to all the travelers, and the fact many of you beam this way.  That doesn’t happen in many contests.  I know it is not a rate contest but to me there are plenty of those.

I like the team aspect although I think you do need to amend the rule about not being allowed to swap information with other team members during the contest.  It meant we had the odd situation where I could get DX information off the cluster or a non-ZL team member but not from a team mate.  I am not sure what mischief this is trying to stop unless we are all operating unassisted (which we weren’t).

Participation wise I don’t think you would get many more ZLs than were on.  Contesting is not a big thing down here and there are less CW ops than SSB ones.  I’d estimate there are probably about 30 guys who contest in any form at all and I think roughly 12-14 of them were on at some point which is pretty good.

73
Mark ZL3AB

Tuesday 15 March 2016
Hello to All.

Just a word of thanks for all the calls and the fine competition this past weekend. I thoroughly enjoyed entering the 24 hour fray for the first time in 2016 after having dabbled with a smaller 12 hour effort in BERU 2015. OM Hobbs (G3LET/VY2GQ) and I were stuck last year in the middle of a roaring BLIZZARD in BERU 2015 – and my wife kept calling me on the phone telling me the storm was intensifying and that I needed to quit the contest. She feared that the expected 100cm snowfall would trap me down at the house and that we would miss our Monday flights out to CALIFORNIA in order to attend the BNP Paribas tennis tournament with my son KK6ZM in the CA Palm Desert.

Basically, she could not have been more spot on! Peter wound up being trapped here on the island until the FRIDAY following BERU 2015 and I had to quit at sunset and walk out on snowshoes more than 2km in order to reach the main road. Once at my car, I managed the drive back to our Capital city of Charlottetown and learned that the bridge to the island was closed due to high winds.

On Monday morning the bridge opened briefly and we managed the drive down to HALIFAX without major issues (although the snow had made a real mess of the motorways here). We eventually did make it to San Diego by Tuesday morning and the tournament in the desert which was quite a contrast at +33C when compared here to something like -25C – all in less than a span of 24 hours.

This year 10m was all but dead on this side with not a single UK station heard. 15m was only open SKEW over Africa and honestly it sounded more like 10m than 15m where over 1450 qso’s were made the previous weekend during ARRL DX PHONE. What a difference a small dip in the solar flux can mean!

So this became more of a 20/40/80 meter event with some goodies still managed on 15m to make things interesting.

All in all it was great fun and thanks for the fellowship – it was very nice meeting many FOC mates and other fine friends made over the years on the low bands. I hope to try this again at some point using a proper logging program as I was using CT and basically “flying blind” all weekend – I had no idea at all what I needed in terms of bonus points and strategy. I just tried a balance of CQ’ing and tuning and it seemed to work pretty well in the end. Congrats by the way to perennial champion VE3EJ on an incredible BONUS total – that sort of sets the STANDARD for others to shoot for – and it was done under poor conditions. Well done John! 73 JEFF VY2ZM, Prince Edward Island, Canada Team CANADA eh?

New job so scrambled to try to get out to Carrib before the contest but didn’t manage it in time, didn’t want to return to C5 again, probably should have but did give the SCC an outing.
Was different being a G station for the first time in a few years, hope I don’t end up with wooden spoons even as a 12 hour entry (did 11 hours).
10m was dead not one QSO. I heard so many VE on the bands 80/40 & 20 you would have through it was a VE contest. Lot of East EU stations on the bands too.
Waited patiently in the queue for the ZB2 station only to find he went to bed 21:30 just as it was my ‘turn’… ho hum.
Cat woke me up at 4am local so bleary eyed went to the shack and turned on the rig to find Nigel J79XF sending on 40m. Hoped he would not QSY before the PC turned on… he didn’t thankfully. 
Then found Colin ZF2CA a bit later really nice conditions on 40m 4-6am. Then right when expected up came VK/ZL stations, ZL4PW (I was QRP) was my last qso @08:54 almost same time as last year from C5 . 

Restricted entry as QRP on 15m and 20m into simple GP’s but I upped the power to 30w on 40m and 80m into a low 7m AGL G5RV as inverted V as I wanted to work VK this year on 40m.

Nice to see so many travellers. Sadly tried VP9/G3VYI but just couldn’t make a QSO with Mike.

BTW M is a G station guys so it is in BERU had a few say BERU only!

72

Dom
M1K/M1KTA

734 QSOs, 8185 points claimed by win-test (Open Unassisted), but I’m not sure I believe it and I can’t decode the bonus number. Not as severe here as frozen north but certainly 15 and 10m openings harder to find. Got 45 on 10m but lots by QSYing from other bands.

Wasted ages waiting for the Sunday a.m. 20m flurry, grrr. I was sure it was open – I could here are few Gs- but they were all having a party on 40m it seemed.

I need some of that coaching as VE3EJ still 200 ahead L

Grabbed 25 mins doze sat p.m. an 2Hrs 2.30-4.30 UTC, otherwise on til the end.Antennas here mostly great, but noise floors increasing year on year. And the log periodic – up at 100ft and out of the noise – is all but fixed direction as the rotator controller is not man enough. Trying to help fix that for next year.

73 to all

Colin