| Steve GW0GEI once again came up from Ceredigion to join me running the GW HQ station. I’ve been trying to throw off a persistent cold/cough all winter so glad that Steve seemed pleased to have the opportunity to do lots of operating at the weekend. Snow wasn’t an issue except for probably helping to bring down the 80m dipole at the feedpoint overnight Thursday/Friday; fortunately Friday was calm and sunny and it was easy to get it back aloft.Having 10 and 15m wide open completely changed the feel of the contest for us. 80/40 were a bit disappointing especially around greyline but you can’t expect everything. These are some numbers:- BAND QSO EU/UK(%) ——————————— 80m 75 77 40m 122 63 20m 152 45 15m 159 50 10m 111 58 Total 619 56 The right hand column is what DXlog is telling us is our Europe percentage which must be more or less UK&CD from our HQ status. It was remarkably easy to work other Gs on both 10 and 15 even on back scatter.After 15 years with a K3 I’ve just bought a IC-7610 and after some hurried self tutoring and RTFM last week gave it a good run out in Beru. I don’t like using unfamiliar radios and hoped I’d covered all the basics. After the early phases of the contest when I’m conscious of our HQ/’service provider’ role I enjoyed playing with the facilities such as digging out marginal signals using the various tools like audio peaking filter and noise reduction. Late on I had a report of clicks from a G. I spent a few minutes checking obvious settings and turned off full break-in. We were on for the whole 24 hours so if anyone else noticed please drop me an email.Thanks for all the fun and to Steve and all the travellers too. Despite the drudgery overnight it was a great contest. 73, Stew GW0ETF |
Commonwealth Contest @ GW5WS
13 Monday Mar 2023
Posted in HQ Stations, Reports
BERU 2023 G4DBW
Enjoyable contest with much improved HF conditions but much lower activity. Or is it me ?
Recovery from major surgery taking its toll on my concentration , so just a 12 hour restricted entry.
100watts to a 100 foot doublet. My main HF antenna decided it didn’t want to do BERU this year at no notice. So just a Saturday 1000-2200 effort from me this year. 20 open with no BERU traffic until I went QRT at 2200. Quick forays onto 40 and 80 were pretty slow going – auroral flutter made for a few repeats, except for the outstanding signal from VK1A/4 on 40 .
So – I had fun S&P on the many VK and VE team players and all the World Travellers. Thanks to all of them for livening up the contest – without them BERU would become a 3 country contest.
Outside of VK/ZL didnt hear a single Asian/Far East station this time.
Delighted to work ZD7 on 3 bands and pick up the VY1 Yukon station . How does G3TXF achieve such good sigs everywhere he travels? By far the strongest 5B with me, and I only missed him on 80m cos I went QRT early.
Band Q
80 3
40 6
20 52
15 46
10 27
Claimed pts 2,805
73
Bob G4DBW