Call: ZM2B
Operator(s): ZL2BR
Station: ZL2BR

Class: Open-24 HP
QTH: Taranaki
Operating Time (hrs): 18

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
   80:   42
   40:  111
   20:   65
   15:   20
   10:     
------------
Total:  238  Total Score = 4,050

Club: 

Comments:

Extremely poor propagation, plus a severe rain storm with lots of lightning and
long periods of rain static on all bands on all antennas equated to a contest
that I didn't really enjoy.

Signals from beyond the Oceania region seemed to be much weaker than is usual
in this contest.  The usual and expected LF/HF short path opening to UK  didn't
happen, the long path opening towards the end of the contest was much better.

Worked 50 G stations, my lowest number since 1987. VE's were also scarce, just
two 20m contacts. Stations not worked - anyone in Cyprus or Gibraltar, 9G5X and
the rest of Africa. Re the Caribbean, only ZF2CA  and V3 are in my log, 8P9IF
isn't. 3B8/G3TXF was a struggle via long path, but made it into my log a couple
of times. Unexpected but welcome contacts included H40FN and VK8DX.

Rig: IC-7600, AL80B, 800w, C3SS yagi, 40m GP @ 6m, 80m dipole

73, Frank

Call: VO1HP
Operator(s): VO1HP
Station: VO1HP

Class: Open-12 HP
QTH: 
Operating Time (hrs): 

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
   80:   18
   40:   36
   20:  251
   15:   16
   10:    0
------------
Total:  321  Total Score = 3,045

Club: East Coast Canada Contest Club

Comments:

I was on a role and feeling good until the lights went out...literally!....The
power failed at 2pm Sat during a violet and frightening wind storm here...gusts
to 160kmph....I had planned for only 12 hrs this year but that was cut short.

On Friday I had cranked down my tower to about 40ft based on  the forecasts but
had to bring it all the way down sat morning as it was clear that this was going
to be a bad day....power wasgone for us 30 hours came back last night 2100
local.....still windy....during the powererless period the wind chill was about
-20C .   We are used to wind and wild weather but even for here this storm was
extreme and violent....

My VHF tower and InnovAntennas for VO1FN transAtlantic beacon rx at my remote
site are  destroyed...on the ground in pieces.....while falling it took out my
160 Inv L and my 80/40 antennas.  Some how my flimsy HF6V is still standing.

Call: G3YBY
Operator(s): G3YBY
Station: G3RZP

Class: Open-24 HP
QTH: N. Witshire
Operating Time (hrs): 13h48m

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
   80:   36
   40:   62
   20:  110
   15:   29
   10:    0
------------
Total:  237  Total Score = 4,605

Club: Chiltern DX Club

Comments:

This year due to the lack of LF antennas at the home QTH, I operated from the
QTH of Peter G3RZP about 2 miles North-West of me  in the north Wiltshire
sticks (thanks Peter). I entered the SOU 24 hr section using the IC7300 as a
further contest try out. Like everyone else I found condx poor - zilch on 10m
and not great on 15m. Also like others found fewer VEs on 40m than in previous
years. Had a nice opening to ZL on 80m just on and after our sunrise and bagged
5 ZLs. The IC7300 performed well with just one instance of overload on 20m due
to some very strong broadcast stations around 13.8 MHz but that was easily
resolved by a small tweak on the RF gain control otherwise no complaints. Had a
break from 0100 - 0400, and a stop for Boeuf Bourguignon with a cheeky Cote du
Rhone from master-chef Peter Saturday evening.

Sadly very little time for radio these days but wanted to enter as a reaction to all the negativity and committee bashing which seems to be the norm at times. It’s reflectors like this that keep me in touch with the hobby, I love to read contest reports and how operators squeeze the very last db out of their full size top band four squares!
Had a couple of hours at the weekend so dragged the Hustler 5BTV from under the caravan,stuck it in the ground and laid out six 10m radials. Fed with 20m of RG58 and could only run 20w maximum as anything more wiped out the satellite box. Amazingly worked VKs, VEs, 9G, 8P and V31 on 40m. Fewer Qs on 20m working 9G, VE, V31
Used the highly contentious SSC GM1J, when you have a call like MM0BQI why would you not? GM1J is as much a part of me as MM0BQI possibly more as it spells my name backwards………. Despite comments about operators having difficulty understanding short contest calls everyone I worked had no problem getting the call right. Happily no one sent me odd ball Q codes about it either! Maybe these Commonwealth guys have gasped one of the basic rules about logging what is sent rather than what you think it should be.
Last contest I entered was an 80m UKICC event. Made a few Qs but lost all my points on a dodgy Q with a 9A station. Will it stop me entering in future or discourage me, no. Will it sharpen me up and make me a better contester, certainly hope so!
Good fun the few hours I was active. Thanks to everyone who traveled or operated the special CC calls.
Thanks to the CC for working on our behalf.
73
Jim
MM0BQI – GM1J

Beru 2017 will not be recalled as a favourite year but it is one I shall never forget!
I do feel strongly that all overseas Commonwealth ops who do any cw should make an effort to get on air that weekend.
I had personal business at my alternative address where I do not have a stn so I took along a 6 band Butternut antenna which has not been put to use for a number of years. Friday afternoon I started to assemble it and found damage either caused in storage or in transit. The 40/80m ceramic capacitors and mounting bracket were kaput, the 40m tuning wire disintegrated as I unwrapped it. The handbook did not show any length for that wire, nor for the length of a 75 ohm piece of coax which the 50 ohm feeder cable terminates into, which i had forgotten about and didn’t have with me. Tuning the antenna would have had to wait until Saturday morning anyway because the power company decided to erect a couple of poles just over the road and we were without power from 8.00am  until 10pm would you believe? I guess that must have been cheaper than paying the overtime for Saturday working  and a Saturday power cut was the last thing I needed
I decided that any work on the Butternut would not be fruitful and a waste of time. I had wire with me for the Butternut radials so decided it would have to be Dipole antennas. Between the showers I got 3 cut and ready for 10/20 & 40m by darkness. The intention was for an inverted vee fan composition. In my early licence days back in Cornwall I used such a system for 10/15/20m which got out fairly well.
Saturday morning keen and ready start the antenna work at 7.00am. The plan was to use the first 16′ of the butternut as the support mast and lash it to the rails of a balcony which was about 10′ above ground. That would not have been my choice for the vertical butternut  but now it was the only choice, Far from ideal as the structure of the building blocked off one side of the dipoles and the tie off points meant a N/S broadside take off and I needed NW/SE as there are no eligible stns to work in Russia and few in Africa!
You will have read the wx reports here in Cyprus from Mike & Steve over in Paphos at C4I, they might have wondered if the Pilot had landed them in the right country. Equinoctial gales are not rare here, in fact the Cypriots have given them names for each approx date, but the combination of electric storms is not usual plus the fact they normally last at most a couple of days whereas they commenced on Thursday last until last night (Wed) one full week and may not be finished yet.
Beru starts at 12 noon local time which gave me 5 hours to complete the work. In the event it was in and out managing maybe 20 minutes at a time before needing to seek refuge. Also it was quite apparent that single handed raising and lashing the support butternut mast with 6  wires was not going to be an option as it would have needed a step ladder to reach the 10m d/p wires first even though I could reach the other two d/p wires without need of the ladder , which would have been dangerous in that wind, so it was off to the hardware store for a pulley.
I was then able to erect and lash the mast and raise the rope a little at a time tying off the wires starting with the shortest and finishing with the longest, I needed to tie a string plus spanner to each wire in turn as , due to the wind the wires tangled plus snagging on obstacles, lots of to and fro up and down the stairs. I spent so much time sorting those out,it was a nightmare.
Got to the operating table at last, switched on the TS570, testing tx on 20mtrs and dismayed to see the SWR meter at end stop. I had tested the coax PL259’s earlier during one of the rain showers and needed to replace a plug so knew it wasn’t that. Once more into the elements – I used a ‘T’ bone connector with the 259 socket for the common dipole connections. The weather really was so foul that I was not going to get out the MFJ to check impedances , there waan’t time to look for solutions anyway, so  I disconnected the   10 & 40m connectors, at least the ‘T’ bone does have securing holes to wrap the wires around which takes the strain from the connectors so I would be later able to change to one of the other dipoles. On raising the wires once more I saw that the wind had again tangled the wires. Eventually getting back to the rigI found that the SWR was now showing just over 3, no way was I going back out there to alter the wire lengths, so my nominal 100 watt rig was putting out a miserly 25 watts but that would have to do.
Finally on air, my first cq was on 20m and is answered by Quinn G3WRR, the time is 14.22z –  almost four and  a half hours late but the saga isn’t finished as I then had an unexpected visitor, even though my patience had entirely evaporated my sense of politeness had not.
Back at the rig and first cq is answered by Dave G3TBK followed for the next couple of hours with a good run as I was ‘fresh meat, the band closed  here just after 17.00z, I had intended to swap over to the 40m d/p, I had my  little elastic pull-on headlight ready but the weather had not abated  and I had had enough.
Sunday morning the first qso, shortly before 06.00z was VK4CT. the next contact was Nigel in 3B was not until  07.31, I had been looking for him but he found me,  that’s how good the band was (not).  Strange though was the absence of signals, even from EU, yet for all of some 3 hours i was hearing VK4CT followed by 9G5X until the end. both were S7. even 9H, ZB2 & UK were down in the mire for much of the time. No ZL’s even heard, just one other VK (6LW) worked, best dx to the west was VE5. Gottaways were ZF2, 9V1 AT, never even heard Bob in 8P or Ian in V3. I had to smile at the 439 report I got from Brian down in 9J – that just about says it all about cndx, he got it right.
I wish I could say it was fun but it wasn’t, it was certainly a step change going from the usual X7 beam + 40m add on up 50′ plua a full size  80m d/p to an inefficient 20m d/p at 26′, took me back quite a number of years and i have no wish to swap back!
I also wish I could say that the above issues were the end of my troubles but not quite – there was nowhere within 30’ of my operating position where I could connect the rig to earth so I had to do without. That caused multiple RF problems to my laptop and MK11 keyer causing ‘SD’ logger to malfunction, sticking in tx mode after i sent a message causing loss of audio and all of, or the first part of a respondents call or exchange. To restore logging I had to press the minus or Esc key which removed the callers c/s from the window so I needed repeats, also the electronic  keyer malfunctioning adding extra dots – my apologies if you were one of those stns who had to endure that.
Contest Summary.
Restricted section – Unassisted – 12hr category 20m single band8 hrs operating 153 qso – Bonus 25 (wowee)Total pts – around 1500 (my logger seems not to have scored the UK G80 stns)
73  Brian 5B4AIZ / C4Z..

Been around in Beru for a few years and enjoy it, so fun with many very good operators.

Decided to use HQ VA2RAC callsign this year as suggested and it was a good idea.
Had a lot of good Runs, at times pileup was difficult to manage because very often
signals were all at same level.

Few stations asked to QSY for mult. and my only 10m Q was a QSY. Conditions were not so
bad here but not the best. Only 8 Q on 15m. Too bad I had PC problems on saturday night
while I could hear many good signals from EUro.  After 8 Q and a lot of testing I had
no choice to QRT.

Station was a K3, KPA500, KAT500, MK-II, TH3 x2, TH2 and dipole.

Will try to be HQ again next year with more time on the air.

Thanks for all the QSO.

73, Claude VE2FK  (VA2RAC)

As others have noted that was extremely tough.  In fact it bought back memories of the (I think) 2012 contest when the A index was 75!

I have a modest home station with an inverted L which I use as a multiband antenna.  Having found out last year I was transmitting better than I was hearing, this year I put down a couple of beverages on the ground to try and improve my receiving capabilities.  This seemed to work to an extent although during the times I called CQ there were guys I knew were calling me who I just could not pull out and no doubt there were others still I could not hear.

On the positive side we didn’t have any earthquakes this time, 80m opened beautifully to G during grayline on our Sunday evening and I managed to get several in the log.  I also worked V31GX and ZF2CA on 40m which were a highlight.  I set up and had skimmer spots running for the first time in a contest which was eye opening to say the least.

Daytime was a total bust here.  10m and 15m never opened for me and 20m was dead once I had worked the VKs.  Unfortunately I never heard Bob on 8P, Nigel on 3B8 or the 9G boys (I gather no one in ZL managed a 9G QSO).  80m and 40m were easily my best bands, which probably says a lot about this stage of the solar cycle.

In the end I made 111 QSOs with some dupes and no doubt some busted serial numbers.

I had plans to do the 24 hour restricted assisted category and ended up in the 12 hour Open assisted category.  12 hours because I ran of people I could hear and Open because I had to turn the amp on to work several stations.

I will have to re-think my strategy for next year.

73
Mark ZL3AB

— Member ZL3X The Quake Contesters

Well, I’m not out of the wood yet as there are two snow-laden storms
heading towards PEI, but there are a couple of hours before any decision on
exit arrangements need to be made, so here goes!

This year I had a most welcome invitation from Jeff and Miriam (ZM) to
visit their amazing villa on the NW coast of beautiful PEI. Not to operate
Jeff’s legendary station you understand but to deploy a DIY Restricted
station on the shoreline and be royally entertained before, during and
after the event. Something not to be missed! The Briggs villa is
something to be experienced. They spend much of the 9 month long PEI
winter either in their Charlottetown condo or back at K1ZM, which is still
Jeff’s Cape Cod “home” station. There are therefore three separate heating
systems in a mutual back-up arrangement, including heat pumps, an oil-fired
furnace and bottled gas. It turned out that the heat pumps generated some
noise on 15 and 20 and so we reverted to the furnace for the BERU weekend.

Enough of the background – the plan was to transport as much of the G3LET
station (also used twice at 9H3ET) as possible to create an independent
facility, which still benefitted from Jeff’s extraordinary cliff-top NW
take-off. This consisted of K3, P3 and a new acquisition – an I-Pro Home
vertical dipole – together with a local reproduction of my base coupler
tuned 250 ft sloper for 80m, which was expected to provide a good
proportion of the weekend’s activity. In the end, Jeff and I also erected
a centre hung dipole cut for 40m, which also served pretty well on 15,
during the short flashes when it opened. Now you may ask how an I-Pro
vertical with it’s vertical radiator and horizontal loading sections all of
2.5m fits into a fishing bag. The answer was to cut them all into 3 pieces
of 0.85m or thereabouts and fashion slotted joining pieces with
appropriately sized hose clamps to tie everything together. Packed into
cardboard tubes, all of this just fitted diagonally into my largest
suitcase.

As it was going to be impossible to bring the sloper into Jeff’s basement
where the operation was set up, a CG3000 coupler, also used in NFD, was
brought along. This made QSYs between 40 and 80 a little cumbersome but
at least it was reliable and provided alternative directlvity for the HF
bands on occasion. After some feeder mix-up which directed the Bias-Tee
power for the tuner into the I-Pro feed balun for a day or so, all worked
well and I was in business by Thursday afternoon. With such fleeting
openings on critical bands, the P3 proved a real time-saver in identifying
open bands and the location of any occupants. In order to tune the I-Pro
and be in a position to switch automatically between antennas, my KAT-500
tuner also came along.

After poking around on Thursday and Friday, I was resigned to a really hard
time. Nothing north of I andS5 had appeared on 15m and even Ron YDX had
projected a very modest signal on 80m. So it was with some trepidation
that I arose early (at 0500 local) on Saturday to see what was about. Not
so bad, some VKs and ZLs already checking out 80m at workable levels. The
big VE’s didn’t appear until an hour later for the start, but of course
they were HUGE. Not a lot of point in trying to run of course with 100w
but several of the VK/ZLs were coming back and the first couple of hours
were quite productive of bonuses. 20 was in full swing by midday GMT and
so I ventured a peek at 15m. Both Nigel and Iain were doing well there and
there was even a whisper from Don at G3BJ. Was a miracle about to happen?
Not exactly, because there wasn’t really the prospect of runs as in
previous years, but there was enough going on to hang on as long as I could
before reverting to 20m, which was OK but not wonderful.

BERU really opened up at 1900 when 40m opened up big time to the UK and
Jeff’s cliff-top location really came into its own. OK, the St. Lawrence
seaway is jam-packed with pack ice in March but there must be some salty
stuff underneath and that really worked! I moved straight on to 80m when
40m thinned out and the whole process was repeated for another hour or
more. I was amazed to find that I had nearly caught up with Nigel’s
numbers. In fact he was one of the surprises of the event, with wonderful
signals on all of the 4 open bands. In fact, easier to raise on 80m than
on 15m. Iain of course was huge everywhere and came back first or second
call each time as he was more or less in line with the favoured direction
of my sloper. Not a sign of a VU or 9V1 of course, but I was eventually
delighted by a call from ZD8RH on 40m, having heard him calling some big
runners earlier and failed to attract his attention.

So, not a wonderful bonus tally of course, but those 40m and 80m runs did
wonders for the QSO total. Despite absolutely no QSOs at all during the
past two hours (just 80m open with VKs and ZLs worked the first morning),
it proved a really enjoyable weekend, albeit hard work for most of the
time. Being rather a long way north, I had anticipated being left out of a
lot of the action, but the general lack of HF action seemed to work to my
advantage to some extent.

Visitors to Jeff’s patch are often pointed out the small white and red
lights visible (with good eyesight) from the headland. The white one is
the nav light from a cruise liner off the coast of France. The red one (of
course!) is on top of GM3POI’s tower. Be that as it may, it was a
wonderful trip and the hospitality of Jeff and Miriam is something to be
experienced – very many thanks to both of them.

Finally, to the totals. SD worked faultlessly in scoring all valid QSOs
and provided welcome real-time feedback on how I was doing, but it does not
facilitate display of a copiable summary. So apologies if the formatting
doesn’t work too well.

Gross QSOs 657, net of dupes, 645

80m 40m 20m 15m 10m
QSOs 189 239 172 45 0
Dupes 2 6 3 1 0
Bonuses 47 68 42 18 0

Total claimed points 6,725

Thanks to all who called and responded, especially all the HQ stations, who
really did an amazing job and made all the difference under the present
indifferent propagation.

73, Peter G3LET, VY2GQ