Even in these low sunspot times, the magic of Beru remains. I decided to go back to M6T a week after our Multi-2 entry in the ARRL contest and my task was made a little easier having left two of the towers at two thirds of full height, so I only had two more to crank up! 20m was going to be the key band so I went for the luxury of two four element Cushcraft beams with a homebrew stackmatch, leaving the Bencher Skyhawk to be used on 15 and 10m. The 402CD at nearly 100ft performed well though I had a concern before the contest when the SWR went high, but it turned out to be a loose connector in the shack so all was well. The M6T 4 square for 80m did a great job as always and I think this is the first time I have worked ZL on the band on Saturday evening, as well as four VKs.

10m was a washout apart from G6XX G3DR GB5CC all worked in the first hour. I tried with Nigel near the end but neither of us had any optimism! 15m was poor but I moved as many stations as I could, and there was a little patch between 14.23 and 16.34 where I put a total of seven Canadian stations in the log. Many were ESP level. 40m started to be productive around 15.30 and that’s where SO2R really came into its own, but I pretty much used the other radio throughout the whole contest. Almost all passes to another band worked, at least in this one it’s easy to find a QSY frequency. The Tesla contest caused some problems but fortunately they mainly stayed higher in the band. There is some evidence that I fell asleep at the keyboard on 80m in the early hours of the morning! Woke up after a while and decided it was time for some proper sleep. I set the alarm to wake me after 75 minutes, got up feeling awful but was rewarded with a burst of 9 QSOs in 24 minutes, mostly bonuses, after which I went back to bed for another 90 minutes.

WinTest says I was on for 18hours 30 but that’s because I didn’t adjust its offtime threshold and I reckon I was at the radio for around 21 hours in total. Keith YXI was eight ahead at one stage but I think he got more sleep than me overnight and although I didn’t hear him give a serial on Sunday morning I believe I pulled sufficiently far ahead. Interesting that our bonus count is identical on 80 and 20m. Sometimes the last hour of Beru can be dire so I’m pleased to have made seven QSOs in the last sixty minutes, and beaten the pileup for VU2PTT on 15 to put him in the log with three minutes remaining.

Great to work old friends, and thanks to the Beru travellers – I hope you all manage to make it home. I didn’t realise it was Peter G3LET at VP5O. Great pleasure to hear Beru stalward Nigel 6Y5HN active again, and delighted also to work Neville 6Y5FS. Nice to work David VA7DXX on 80m at good strength.

Dave G4BUO

 BAND   QSO DUP DXC  HQ  POINTS BONUS   AVG
——————————————–
80    67   1  23   8     335   940 19.03
40   113   1  35  11     565  1500 18.27
20   148   0  39  10     740  1680 16.35
15    30   0  21   4     150   600 25.00
10     3   0   0   3      15    60 25.00
——————————————–
TOTAL   361   2 118  36    1805  4780 18.24
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TOTAL SCORE : 6 585