From: Don Beattie, G3BJ
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2021 15:35:23 GMT

Well that was interesting.

BERU seems to bring Murphy along most years, and sadly this was no exception. Being at the end of the period of winter storms, the contest always seems to dig out the weakness in the antenna system and this year it was the main beam and specifically the rotator. About four hours before the end of the contest it failed, leaving the 40-10 yagi pointing West. Could have been worse, but it meant that short path openings were  left to the SteppIR on a smaller unguyed tower, which was not anywhere near full height because of the winds the last few days. So the last few hours were distinctly sub-optimal here.

On top of that, the period from 02.00 to 04.30 was dire here, which didn’t help the eyelids stay open. Hardly a signal on the bands and those that were there, were already in the log. Other than that, I thought conditions were sort of OK. I started on  a mix of 15m and 10m, moving people as much as possible. 40 was still open to north/east Canada so I cleared a few early bonuses there as well. I then decided to run on 20m, and use SO2R to pick the bonuses from 10 and 15. I think this worked OK, although perhaps I should have tried running more on 15. The evening VK/ZL LF slot came and went – just  13 VK/ZL on 40/80 in that slot. Then the beam mainly to the West for VE, and Caribbean, with some African callers. . Propagation to VE5-7 on 40 and 80 was difficult – in fact not a lot. After the doldrums of the early hours, the bands perked up for the sunrise openings and nearly 30 VK/ZLs were added in that time. But the last few hours were quite slow here, partly I think because of the beam being fixed, and I suspect I will have dropped back compared to others because of that.

A good level of activity from the UK – not just the various HQ stations (thanks guys) but quite an active set of UK participants, including I think some calls new to the contest. I thought ZS was a little light this year and of course we missed the travellers for obvious reasons. Because of that, I find it difficult to calibrate results this time. Thanks for all the Qs. Here are the numbers – manually adjusted for the lunatic calls and also for the fact that WinTest does not like ZL6HQ/n – when worked twice on the same band, it is marked as a dupe. I think that is fixed in the following numbers.

BAND   QSO DUP DXC  HQ  POINTS BONUS   AVG

——————————————–

   80    67   2  19  13     340   920 18.81

   40   108   1  24  19     540  1240 16.48

   20   117   9  24  17     625  1340 16.79

   15    21   0  13   5     100   400 23.81

   10     7   0   2   5      35   140 25.00

——————————————–

TOTAL   320  12  82  59    1640  4040 17.75

============================================

            TOTAL SCORE : 5 680

As ever, a frustratingly satisfying contest – definitely a cut above the other rate contests.

Thanks to Bob, G3PJT and the guys for keeping the promotion going for BERU. It is paying off.

Now – where is my rotator spanner?

73, Don