ERU – HQ section – G3DR
From: Peter G3LET
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2021 11:13:46 GMT
Well, that was rather disappointing!  Having  lost a peak evening hour fixing a short in the main feeder run (not sure whether moles, rabbits or rats), I was relying upon a decent morning opening on at least 40 and 20 to the antipodes but no.  40 opened very late and was short, 20 was even later and never really happened. so many banker bonuses were lost.  Nothing on 40 to the west coast either.

The  highlights were 6Y5HN and ZF2CA, shining signals on all bands.I don’t think I can have set up SD properly as an HQ station and so all my “G” QSOs were scored as null points.  That was actually quite  handy because scoring was as for a standard entry and it was easy to compare with previous years. So I ended with 215 “proper” QSOs out of a total of 420, for a final points total of 3950 plus 205 x 5 pointers.  I guess the bonus tally tells the tale of conditions, 40 best with 58, then 80 with 38, 20 with 36 and 15 on 15.With simple verticals, I was able to run for about half the time and most of the bonuses came from S/P, aided by my P3, which shows the condition of each band at a glance.The ZL6HQ/* brigade was unexpected and all the variants were scored as dupes, so the total will likely increase a bit.  The adjudication program may have something to say about that!
Kit – K3, P3 and KPA500 feeding an elevated BigIR and standard 66 ft vertical for 80.  I re-packaged an AT-1000U tuner in a water-resistant housing which was placed at the base of the 66 footer, to allow it to tune the other bands and provide some elevation choice on the higher bands.  This seemed to work quite well until the feeder failed – there wasn’t time to fix it permanently and so the base tuner was out of commission for most of the event.I  almost regretted not allowing for any sleep period as the 02 and 03 hours produced few QSOs, although they were just about all bonuses!
Anyway, it was a pleasure  to run BERU from home for the first time in nearly 10 years.  Thanks to the contest committee for letting me use G3DR and to all who called or responded.73, Peter G3LET