Here is a belated report on my BERU (sorry, Commonwealth Contest) entry for 2019. This falls into the “you’ve read the best, now read one of the rest” category.
I went over to the Isle of Wight as in 2017 to enter the Restricted Unassisted category, but hadn’t decided whether to do 12 or 24 hours – deciding to wait and see how things went. Operation was from an amazing, old fashioned holiday centre straight out if Hi-de-Hi, right on top of the cliffs near Brighstone on the south west facing coast of the island. The intention was to use the Titan DX antenna again, but having carefully located and gathered all the bits, I left behind the tin of self tapping screws that are used to hold it all together. After coming out with a few words of fluent Anglo Saxon, I was reduced to using a rather manky 14AVQ vertical taken along as a backup in case the Titan proved too much for single handed erection (my previous helpers – son and granddaughter – were unavailable this time). The base of the 14AVQ was only 8 feet up, and it was nowhere near resonant but the internal ATU on the K3 allowed a usable SWR on all five bands (although only just so on 80m as one might expect) but it definitely worked better than anticipated, particularly on 40m.
Looking at each of the bands in turn….No signals at all were heard on 10m despite looking fairly regularly – pretty much as expected. 15m was not much better – worked two 5B4s and a 9J2 (Brian of course) in the first hour and heard nothing thereafter. 20m was pretty productive with VEs workable between 1100 and 2100 and as sprinkling of others including 3B8, 8P, 9G, V3, VP9, ZB & ZL.40m proved to be the best band for me, with VKs between 1700 & 1900 and 0600 & 0900, VEs between 1800 & 2400, again with a further sprinkling including 3B, 9V, C5, VP9, ZB, ZF & ZL. 80m was, as expected, disappointing in view of the sub-optimum antenna but a few VEs and ZF were managed. Despite having a kip between midnight and 0530 I ended up doing just over 14 hours putting me into the 24 hour category. But a least that was a positive decision rather than last year’s faulty counting!
High spots – working 8 VKs on the trot in a 9 minute period around 1730, and a ZL ten minutes later
Low spots – losing at least a dozen contacts on 80m that I could here but couldn’t hear me.
Overall results
80m 12 QSOs 500 points
40m 52 QSOs 1140 points
20m 42 QSOs 800 points
15m 3 QSOs 75 points
10m 0 QSOs 0 points
All 109 QSOs 2450 points
What else to say? The weather was sunny on the way over on Friday, became overcast and then rainy as antenna erection took place. It continued with spasmodic rain and continual dreadfully high winds throughout the weekend. I cringed every time I looked out of the window and saw the way the 14AVQ was bending. During takedown it started hailing so much that it gave me a headache and I was obliged to return to the chalet till it passed. And then, guess what – Monday dawned sunny and relatively calm…personally I blame the Met Office. And catering was neither cordon bleu nor healthy. I survived on a mixture of Marmite sandwiches, marmalade sandwiches and Pot Noodles, all washed down with tea. I counted 23 used teabags while clearing up.
All in all a terrific weekend and I look forward to 2020 – maybe cycle 25 will be under way properly by then?! Please arrange Bob.
Finally many thanks to Bob for all his promotional work, and to all the operators of the HQ stations which added to the fun when things were quiet.
73, Quin G3WRR