Bob – here is my report on the 2020 BERU, thanks.

So glad I made the effort to get back in the BERU – Just managed to get my 80m shallow vee up to about 45 ft on Friday night using some bendy 3″ plastic pipes which fell over a couple of times during erection !! It was meant to be a temporary antenna but after all the effort I think it will continue to be an eyesore for a while. The 4el KLM is only about 40′ fixed and pointing 60 deg. but did not do too badly in the end. Had an amp failure on the old SB201 when the relay wire to the swr bridge seemed to have melted and made me deaf !! So after a quick pull down and an equally quick solder job – got it going again !! Desperately tried to snag ZD7BG on 15 but he was focused on EU, also heard my neighbour ZF2CA from the back of the beam but he could not hear me. Good to hear some still familiar calls like G4BUO he was loud !! The HQ stations all had big signals too – the lack of multipliers and VK/ZL’s let me down this year.

80 and 40 was very hashy throughout the entire contest – I got a very slow start as I was using and learning the new SD logging program for the first time after coming from the old pen and paper logging 23 years ago !!. It is great when you get going eventually !! Now if only I can get it to key from the keyboard – oh well, I have another year to figure it out.

Thoroughly enjoyed it although slightly handicapped by a quadruple bypass and arthritic fingers !!! Covid19 hit us here on the island earlier in the week so there were many family concerns, but the show must go on hi !! Hope to see you all next year……

This is what it looked like in the end, less anything that I got wrong of course…. SD check was a breeze !!

-    -        80m     40m    20m   15m   10m   Total
QSO's          70     120    139     4     0     333
Bonus          27      36     31     3     0      97
Points        890    1320   1315    80     0    3605

Nigel 6Y5HN.