From: David Aslin
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2021 16:47:00 GMT
Don,
I’m guessing you were getting special attention. None of those callsigns appeared in any spots that I saw (I was assisted) nor did I hear any trace of them in the large amount of S & P that I found necessary this weekend – see my story below. I didn’t have any egregious DQRM such as yours, but some carriers appeared suspiciously on several DX pileups – and stayed there, so they were not tuning up.
Before I get to my story, let me underline Don’s comments in support of all the UK HQ stations – indeed all the HQ stations Commonwealth wide. And a big thank you to Bob G3PJT for continuing efforts for visibility of the contest and the superb documentation of BERU on his website.
Turning to my story of the contest, I’m not sure whether it was a Churchill, Eisenhower or Mike Tyson weekend (Churchill said, “Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential” while Eisenhower said, “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” Mike Tyson said “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”) On reflection it felt like Mike Tyson was right…
Plan A: Tower at 20m, fan dipoles at 20m for 80 & 40m, first all-out 24hr BERU with good antennas and a good site; unassisted high power
Tyson moment: wind storms took out the fan dipoles and meant it was prudent to lower the tower to 30ft. We live on a hilltop, so the storms also took out sleep for Thursday and Friday nights. Woke on Saturday feeling just like old times – after a full 48 hour contest. Then the ACOM 2000A failed with an antenna relay fault (aside: support from Val at ACOM was superb as ever, but the amp won’t be available until new relay arrives this week).
Plan B: BERU is a favourite contest of mine, so how to make the best of this? Decided to give away some points, work some new band slots and have a relaxed enjoyable time. Re-mounted the fan dipoles in a hailstorm (not so relaxing) and hooked up the KPA500. Since I was envisaging a casual operation, I didn’t bother to fire up N1MM so that any non-contest band slots I heard/worked could be directly logged. Should have known better. That also meant hand keying the entire contest; with an arthritic right hand and sleep deprivation that was not my best choice. Apologies to all those who suffered some erratic keying on my part.
Early going made it clear that I was going to have to fight for every QSO. I was clearly not loud with the antennas lowered, so got used to being at the back of the queue in pileups and to spending almost 100% of the time doing S & P. But with the exception of 9M, 9V and VE7 I eventually worked all that I could hear, which included a good number of VK and ZL on 80, 40, 20 and a few good Qs on 10m and 15m. Thanks Andy 5Z4VJ and Brian 9J2BO in particular for 10m – you were loud! I also went on a mission to work as many HQ stations as possible, aided by my choice of assisted section.
After 12 hours I finished on 118 good ones. Not a great outcome, but there’s no question I had fun. No idea what the score is, as DXLab doesn’t calculate that; I back filled the QSOs via ADIF into N1MM, which claims 1965 points, but I’m sure that’s not correct. I’ll let the log check software do its thing.
I hope everyone else had as much fun as I did. Plan B worked!
73, David G3WGN