I had fun in my second BERU. I decided to enter the 24 hours section to gain maximum points for Team Essex CW. Running low power meant that the vast majority of my QSOS were S&P. I tried running quite a few times but, even with reasonable RBN spots, there were few callers.

I was pleased to work all the English HQ stations on all bands, the Scots on 4 bands, GW6XX on 3 and GI6XX on 2 bands. Overseas HQ stations were harder to get; VA3RAC on 3 bands, VA2RAC on 2 bands, and VK3WIA, VK5WIA and VK7WIA on 40m.

As described many times, condx weren’t great. I found 15m patchy and the SDR waterfall was useful for spotting new signals appearing. Nothing seen on 10m except when Nick and Graham appeared. 40m was my best band with some good DX mults worked but with hindsight I may have spent too long there on Saturday early evening instead of 20m. It still seemed relatively busy when I stopped just after midnight. I restarted at 0545z but I found it slow on 40/80m – few new stations running and difficult in the pile ups for VK/ZL with 100W and a dipole. The higher bands weren’t good in the morning either. The VKs and ZLs were weak on 20m and didn’t hear me.

I used the on-line scoreboard and found it a good motivator to keep chasing my team mates and other stations.

Rig: Flex 6500 running 100W.

Antennas: Hexbeam at 9m, dipoles for 40m and 80m at 15m.

Category : Single Operator Assisted (SO A)

Band(s): All bands (AB)

Class: Low Power (LP)

Or in BERU terms: Open, Single Operator, Assisted – 24-hour – Maximum legal power – no antenna restrictions.

I was QRV from 10z until 2359z and 0547z to 0959z.

Time on (from N1MM) 16h 20m.

Band QSOs Pts Cty Sec Pt/Q

80 24 560 16 2 23.3

40 60 1240 38 6 20.7

20 58 1145 39 3 19.7

15 16 400 12 1 25.0

10 2 50 0 1 25.0

Total 160 3395 105 13 21.2

Score: 3,395

1 Mult = 1.4 Qs

Stations worked (exc HQ):

  • 80m 1x ZL (LP) and 2x VK (SP) plus ZF2 VP9 C5 5B4 ZB2 and 11x VE.
  • 40m 4x ZL (LP) and 12x VK (10 SP & 2 LP) plus VP9 ZF2 3B8 C5 9V1 5B4 ZB2 9H1 and 29x VE
  • 20m 3B8 9G 9J2 C5 V5 8P5 V3 VP9 ZF 5B4 9H1 VU 1x VK 35x VE (inc VY1AAA)
  • 15m 3B8 9J2 V5 2x VK 2x VE ZD7 ZF 5B4
  • 10m none.

A fun contest despite conditions. Thanks to all the travellers and HQ stations.

73 Paul G4PVM