davebuo 5:57pm #19318   A shoulder injury meant I wasn’t able to put up the tribander on a temporary mast, and I wasn’t set up for SO2R so I thought I’d just spend a few hours here and there, but of course the Commonwealth Contest always sucks you in! So I emded up doing a full 12 hours in three main periods.My doublet has a switch to strap the feeders for 80m (and 160m but not in this contest) and on my first foray onto 40m I got a report of wideband noise, went outside to see evidence of arcing around the switch so I quickly had to put up a 40m dipole on another mast. Later, the DC line to the switch failed so I had to replace that in the dark and rain.Like others, I found 80m to be especially poor, and it seems I did well to work two ZLs in the morning long path opening. Not many VKs to be worked on 40m long path, I had already worked most of them the previous evening though the Tesla contest made things really difficult. Good to see so much activity on 10m and I think I missed some of the openings, not expecting the band to be any good at those times. Pleased to work both 6Y5FS and 6Y5HN, and also to get ZD7BG on two bands.73 Dave G4BUO  BAND QSO BONUS HQ DUP POINTS AVG ———————————    80  24    12  5   0    120 5.0    40  43    29  5   0    215 5.0    20  84    47  7   0    420 5.0    15  43    24  6   0    215 5.0    10  39    24  4   0    195 5.0 ——————————— TOTAL 233   136 27   0   1165 5.0 =================================         FINAL SCORE: 4 425 K3 + Acom 2000A DXLog 80m tee 40m inverted vee up 30ft 20m delta loop 15, 10m 60ft doublet up 33ft LZ1AQ receive antenna

The suitcase vertical was erected on the roof of a rented villa here near the sea in Pafos/Coral Bay…, XYL and son joined me as a BERU holliday!

.

I managed 330 Q with 3600 pts from an FT991a ( not the best CW Rx !!) and the suitcase vertical on the roof , with a manually switched loading coil for 80m and 8 radials…plenty of garden and 20 deg C and sunny.

10 was great at the start but 15 and 20 closed early here and never restarted…40 was good but went for a kip at 0130 till 0500 so missed a few

80 was a struggle on the 30 foot vertical, base loaded and managed a few, maybe 15 or so, not bad from here,,to G , but only VE3EJ in VE.on 80m.

10m was very weird sunday morning, echoes and s9+++ from some G s and GM s, then QSB to zero.

Great to work 9J2BO on 2 bands! Anyway great fun as usual and the VK and VE activity must be well up on 2022..

cheers

Mike G3VYI/5B

Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2023 13:54:43 GMT

I think I got the strategy wrong this year. I chose a 24hr entry instead of 12hr, always planning a 3hr rest in the middle of the night. When I closed down at 01:30 Sunday morning I had 314 QSOs in the log.  Returning at 04:30 and sticking it out to the end only added a further 31 QSOs for 5.5hr operating. The last two hours, even with lots of CQing only produced 3 QSOs in each hour, and one of those was a dupe.  Final tally was 345 QSOs (including 7 dupes).

I’ve participated many times in BERU/CC but this is the first I failed to work VK or ZL on 80m. Perhaps I took my eye of 80m because the higher bands were in good shape, but as others have pointed out LF conditions were down. I also failed to work ZL on 10m. embarrassing!

A couple of interesting QSO: worked S79/AE0BF at 05:59 on 10m, high in the band when he was CQing with no other callers. I had to go split to work VU2TMP on 10m, had to have a proper QSO with ZL3XDJ at the bottom end of 40m in order to claim a contact. A similar story for AP2TN on 10m.

I managed a clean sweep of the Gx5WS and GB5CC stations with the exception of GD5WS which I was expecting to hear but suspect wasn’t on.

The band breakdown is:

BAND QSO BONUS HQ DUP POINTS

———————————

   80    25    10    6   0    120

   40    55    34    6   2    275

   20  101    58    8   2    505

   15    86    50  10   2    430

   10    71    46    6   1    355

———————————

TOTAL 338   198 36   7   1685

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

        FINAL SCORE: 6 365

Station was: FTdx101D, ADOM 1K amp, inverted V at 12m for 40, 20, 15 & 10 plus 45m end fed at 15m for 80m. Logging with DXLog.net.

To pick up on another thread in the reports – my sympathy to Don (G3BJ) for having to use a call ending in a S (G5WS) – I tell you it’s even worse ending with H (G3WPH). I don’t think G3WPS has been active for many years or was even a DXer, but suspect I have worked DXCC for him.

With the exception of the last couple of hours it was enjoyable and I thank all for participating, especially those who travelled or put on special stations.

Mike /G3WPH/G3P

Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2023 11:57:53 GMT

Hi Folks 

First of all thanks to all the HQ stations, worked most of the UK ones on 5bands plus all the travellers which was good to work on a lot of bands.

Over the last month the contests that use lower bands have been very poor condition wise and the higher bands have been much better, so this contest was the same. Started at 10am on the do on the Saturday on 10m. First contact with ZL was on 15 and then VK on 10m…..the noise level was low and it was easy to hear the stations and lucky there was no other contests to cause any issues with not having the space or just keying over all the DX.  8P0P on 10m was great to get at around 6pm on the Saturday then the band was still active but sadly not many stations to work.

Down onto 20m and worked some VE,6Y, ZL and VK. Some bits on 40m then dinner time and called it a night at 1900 BUT I came back into the shack at 2230 to find a lot of stations kicking around and 40m alive so took the gamble with the time and work some more until midnight then went to get some sleep. I did jump onto 160 and gave away some points for the SP contest….

Now for the Sunday I only had 2.30hs left of time to use, so thought I would start just before 7am and see what I could get, ZD7 on 40 then ZF2 on 80, then it was a case of hunting around and managed a number of VK and ZL on 40m but as others stated it was a bit of hard going due to aural effect and I slowed down and lots of repeats but this contest allows for that as its not massive numbers we will get so that was good, there was time. Finished off around 8.30am which was a good idea as I then went onto work some new countries for 2023, right place at r

I did not work VK or ZL on 80m, the other bands were great. Overall it was a great contest, always is. My Q count is up on last year which am happy with. I did miss GM5WS on 80 and 40 arghh but such is life.

Contest: RSGBBERU

 Band     QSOs     Pts  Cty  Sec  Pt/Q

   3.5       16         360   10    2  22.5

     7        41         845   29    1  20.6

    14       82       1650   57    5  20.1

    21       89       1665   56    5  18.7

    28       64       1300   44    2  20.3

 Total     292      5820  196   15  19.9

Score: 5,820

Kit: XR6c beam 20 to 10
Rotary dipole: 40m
Dipole: 80m
Radio: icom7610
Amp: Acom

Operating time  : 11:09

 BAND   QSO DUP DXC  HQ  POINTS BONUS   AVG
——————————————–
   80    16   0   6   5      80   280 22.50
   40    25   0  13   4     125   400 21.00
   20    57   1  19   7     285   820 19.39
   15    34   0  17   6     170   600 22.65
   10    25   0  14   1     125   460 23.40
——————————————–
TOTAL   157   1  69  23     785  2560 21.31
============================================
            TOTAL SCORE : 3 345

Not done too many BERUs over recent years – being a non-member of RSGB ruled me out for a while HI HI.

Having rejoined the society last year I had a dabble. With family commitments to honour, the 12-hr section suited me although I still had a very sub-optimatal operating schedule missing Saturday afternoon/evening session, no doubt when UK – VE prop likely peaked.

I started with a short 90 minute session around midday but then had to QRX until 2100 UTC. I was quite surprised to be able to work VEs on 10m as late as 2130 UTC with only a wire suggesting I definitely missed a good Saturday evening opening on the higher bands. So with a good chunk of operating time still to fit in, I put a stint in through the wee small hours when the rate was almost nil. Nevertheless, I was rewarded with some surprising 20m QSOs into ZL between 0200 and 0400 UTC. I thought 40m was quite poor overnight but 80m seemed better although I didn’t hear any ZL’s on 80m around sunrise. As others have mentioned, there was lots of raspy sounding signals on many bands.

Pleased with several 5-band QSOs: 5B/G3TXF, 9H1PI, CF3A, G5WS, VE3EJ, VE3JM and VO1HP along with the following 4-banders: GB5CC, GM5WS, GW5WS, VE3KG, VE3NNT, VK6T, VO2AC, ZF2CA and my old mate Andy, 5Z4VJ. For a single coax-fed wire antenna, an 80m ocf dipole is a pretty versatile tool, only needing the ATU on 15m, at least in this configuration.

At some point I must have miscalculated my timings and by the end of the contest I was short by about 50 minutes of operating time – not that it would have made much immpact. Win-Test performed well and I’m pleased with the rig after recently upgrading my trusty FT1000MP MKV to a 5000MP.

FTdx5000MP, 100 W, 80m off centre fed dipole.

73 Dez, G3WW

Well this didn’t start very well. Watching the antennas thrash about in a violent hailstorm on Friday afternoon I noticed that one of the capacity loading wires on the 40 rotary dipole had snapped.
No chance of repair before the start as its at 70 ft right at the top of the tower stub mast. Wworse the broken wire was draped over the 20m yagi.
I managed to find a spare 40m dipole and rigged it up a sloper but it didn’t seem to hear very well at all.

Mentally this was not a good start. Anyway here is a band by band summary.

10m. What a dramatic change from 2022! Really good signals from VK/ZL.
There seemed to have been some sort of disturbance as it didn’t sound quite as good as it did last week but that said, it improved as the day wore on, even some ZS activity too.

Worked. 5B, 5Z, 6Y, 8P, 9G, 9H, 9J, 9Z, AP, V2, VE1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9. VK2, 3, 4, 5, 6. VO1, 2. VU2, ZD7, ZF, ZL1, 2, 3 ZS1, 6.

15m. Sounded in really good shape. Suspect it might have been open to somewhere all night.

Worked. 5B, 5Z, 6Y, 9G, 9H, V2, V4, VE1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9. VK2, 3, 4, 5, 6. 7 VO1, 2. VY1, ZD7, ZF, ZL2, 3, 4

20m. Was very noisy the whole contest which made things pretty unpleasant. LP and SP on VK/ZL at the same time. Lot of antenna turning on the weaker signals.

Worked. 5B, 5Z, 6Y, 9G, 9H, 9J, VE 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9. VK2, 3, 4, 5, 6. 7 VO1, 2. ZF, ZL2, 3, 4

40m. Managed to work some of the stronger stations but I realised I had a problem when I couldn’t even hear some of the DX being worked easily by others.

Worked. 6Y, 9Z, VE3, VK2,4 ZF, ZL3

80m. Conditions were well down compared with last week when I was able to work Barry VK2BJ quite easily. Nil at UK sunset.

Worked VE3, ZF only

Set up K4D + amp, HF yagi, 40 sloper, 80 vertical. NCC-2 for noise nulling.

73 and many thanks to the travellers and the HQs

Bob G3PJT

Nice report Andy,
Now a QRP perspective, conditions this year  much better than previous years.
When calling a station with 5watts you expect a lot of requests for repeats but so much fewer this year than usual.

I found the Short Path on Saturday evening produced a few VK and my solitary ZL.
So at one point I was working VE and VK within minutes, then later on I thought I was working 2 metres as the auroral rasp was impossible on some stations. 20 metres open till after midnight with replies from some stations barely moving the S meter but with an immediate response.

Sunday morning long path unusually for me I worked 6 east coast VK one after another.
So lots of VE to work and Caribbean and African in the mix as well as the travellers and HQ(thanks guys)
124 contacts for me from my 2 ele HF , wires and my homebrew rotatable dipole for 40 m making a difference this time.
Great fun
73 Bill GM4M GM4UBJ

Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2023 23:36:16 GMT

Well I feel somewhat fragilistic (with apologies to Julie Andrews) this morning.

I did the 24 hours but can’t account for a few hours when I fell asleep at the rig !

It seemed to me that someone switched off the ionosphere immediately prior to the start of the contest when 10m which had been very lively just suddenly closed.

However, it did come back to life on Sunday quite reasonably.

80m has to have been the worst I it has ever been. Not only did I not work any G stations I did not hear any either.

40m was made very difficult by being crowded with all the very strong illegal phone stations.

20m and 15m were very consistent throughout and often signals on 15m seemed to be both long path and short path at the same time.

Judging from some of the VE and G QSO numbers, I guess that conditions were better in the northern hemisphere. However VK6LW (VK6T) and VK2IA (VK1A/4) also racked up pretty high numbers so it will be interesting to see their scores.

Overall, I am reasonably satisfied with my score. There was only one country that I heard but did not work. That was 5H in the guise of a very weak 5H6. Yet again I neither worked nor heard a single ZS.

My result is as follows:

Band  QSOs  Bonus QSOs  Pts

———————–

  80:    15           15             375

  40:     80           41          1220

  20:  168            51          1860

  15:  142             43         1570

  10:  106              53        1590

———————–

Total:  511            203       6615

Much better than last year when I was only able to do 12 hours because I was recovering from a severe bout of glandular fever.

Thanks to the HQ stations and everyone else for lots of QSOs.

Barry Simpson  VK2BJ