BERU at VK2PN

13 Monday Mar 2023

Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2023 21:50:55 GMT

RSGB Commonwealth Contest – 2023

Call: VK2PN

QTH: HOME
Operating Time (hrs): 15

Summary:
Band QSOs Bonus Pts
———————–
80: 6 150
40: 43 875
20: 140 1600
15: 74 890
10: 37 745
———————–
Total: 300 4260 Total Score = 4,260

Club: VK Contest Club

Comments:

Thank you all for the QSOs.
Average outcome from me this time. However, better than last two years (Mr.
Murphy intervened).
Felt that the participation was not as good this year. Maybe I expected more.
The bands when open produced big signals. Ten meters did not work as good as I
hoped.
Got some “juicy” calls and thanks for calling.
I feel that my age is starting to slow me down.
73
Patrick VK2PN

Commonwealth Contest VK5WIA – HQ station

13 Monday Mar 2023

Posted by nickg4fal in HQ Stations, Reports

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From: Grant Willis (VK5GR)
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2023 21:29:38 GMT
Folks, For what it’s worth VK5WIA managed: Contest:

Total 254 3335 93 10 13.1Score: 3,3351 Mult = 2.5 Q’s

I saw some big scores towards the end – 800-900s from some of the Canadians and ZF2CA. I also learned what the impact was of my lack of CW practice prior to the contest. I hope I didn’t break too many callsigns. It certainly hit my rate that I used to be able to achieve. I also found it really hard to get spotted on the cluster network. A lot of stations I think must run in the non-cluster section of the contest. To know when the band was open, I resorted to scanning the RBN for my own spots to know if I was at least making it through to the target areas. All up I managed to stay on air for 12:08 hours which included a fairly successful run across the morning greyline on 40m and a good run on 10m Sunday evening to G as well as Sunday morning into VE. I also had contact with quite a few of the Africans on 10 and 15m (9J, 5Z, 9G) but no ZS or VU? To the Caribbean I made 6Y and ZF. No 9M however for Asia but at least made 9V. There were almost no VK domestic ops other than the team stations, and sorry but I couldn’t find many of you during my on times. I only completed a 4-band sweep with about 4-5 of you. (no 80m here still, waiting on parts to rebuild and reconfigure the antenna). I had quite a few G and a couple VE stations that I also managed 4 band sweeps with. HQ stations seem a bit scarce as well. Other than VK and G where there were 4-5 each, there really didn’t seem to be any on. I think I found one in VE, none in ZL and that was it. Even the VKs weren’t common although I managed at least one QSO with each of them (except VK3 – sorry Lee missed you somehow).
Finally, a general word. There were some really grotty signals on the air too. If amateurs want to make a case for high power with the authorities, operators need to put more effort to understanding how to run their transmitters such that they don’t have massive sidebands, clicks and other artefacts on them. In a couple of cases, I suspected RX overload, only to lower my RF gain etc and still see the artefacts present, so I am fairly certain it was the transmitter end. Food for thought.

Regards,Grant VK5GR as VK5WIA for the 2023 BERU

P.S. Logs have been submitted to RSGB and copies sent to VK3GK as requested

Commonwealth Contest VK2GR SO-Open-24 HP

13 Monday Mar 2023

Posted by nickg4fal in Reports

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BERU @ G4PIQ – 12 hour – Unassisted

13 Monday Mar 2023

Posted by nickg4fal in Reports

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BERU @ G4PIQ – 12 hour – Unassisted
From: Andy Cook, G4PIQ
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2023 20:26:54 GMT
A quick BERU report from here.
FINAL SCORE: 5 520 2 x K3 + Ten Tec Titan & Alpha 87A.Dipoles @ 14/18/20m.
Another wires only entry from home. The antennas are all Inv-V dipoles hung from a tree. I attempted to add a 10m and 20m element below the existing 40, 80 and 160 elements – but ended up with a rather tangled mass with some of the wires caught up with each other and some with the tree. It’s a proper maypole dance to get this in the air now avoiding the obstructions of other trees in the garden – in fact my watch tells me that I walked 5 miles while taking it down and putting it back up. Nevertheless – the manual tune valve amp doesn’t care much about the poor SWR from twisted and wrapped-up wires, and things generally seemed to work OK – albeit with rather more inter-radio interference that I’d have liked. Great to have 15 & 10 in much better shape this year. 10 was open really very late – although I heard relatively little BERU activity there away from the obvious times. The low bands were not so busy – though I didn’t think conditions were too bad – except for the path to VK on 80m on Saturday night which was very poor. Only 1 x ZL worked on Sunday morning on 80. I heard another working Dave, G4BUO at much better strength – but no joy attracting them. I found 40 at Sunset and early evening very hard with all the activity in the Tesla contest. It was difficult to find much BERU activity in there. Decent activity from VE, VK and ZL – but a bit thin elsewhere – especially from the East – no VU, 9M, 9V. Heard but couldn’t raise AP and VR2 (oops – not in the Commonwealth any more – obvs!). Good to work Andy, 5Z4VJ on 5 bands and amazing to work 2 different 9J stations (it wasn’t just Brian who was on!).
Thanks to all the travellers and DX activators – you make the event what it is – and to Gx5WS and GB5CC activators – it’s a nice extra feature to keep the event moving along. And especially thank you all for moving for me whenever you could. 73, Andy, G4PIQ

BERU HQ station G5WS

12 Sunday Mar 2023

Posted by nickg4fal in HQ Stations, News, Reports

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Don Beattie, G3BJ 6:52pm

Here’s a short report on the contest from my perspective. I offered to run the England HQ station, using the call G5WS, so my results are not really comparable with those in the UK not able to work UK stations.

Firstly, from a personal perspective G5WS call could have been a better choice – in the early hours I found myself, when using the paddle, reverting to G5W and having to correct myself. Also it brought back to me how important it is to have a call on CW which ends with a “hard” letter (a dash or two). I found the “s” getting misread too many times – I suspect G5WS will be busted in some logs. There seemed fewer problems with non-BERU countries trying to join the contest this year – perhaps word is spreading about what it’s all about.

Conditions for me were mixed – generally good HF conditions combined with rather flat DX conditions on 80m and to an extent also on 40m. The auroral rasp was very prominent on many signals on Saturday evening. Also, the strong back-scatter on UK stations on HF meant that some were quite tricky to copy at speed. I hope however that UK stations were able to copy G5WS and get the band bonuses they wanted.

I think I’m quite a way behind Graham G4FNL running GB5CC, so well done to him – he seemed a big signal everywhere.

BERU is a great test of propagation knowledge and perseverance – I plan to be back as a “normal” entrant next year.

For what it’s worth, here are the numbers, and I’ve added an extra column so that the comparable QSO numbers can be seen when eliminating all UK QSOs.

Thanks to all for the fun.

Don, G3BJ

BAND QSO Excl.UK DUP DXC HQ POINTS BONUS AVG

————————————————–

80 97 43 1 16 2 215 560 7.99

40 155 70 0 29 3 350 980 8.58

20 187 120 4 31 11 550 1460 10.75

15 167 89 3 29 7 445 1160 9.61

10 140 71 0 29 5 355 1060 10.11

————————————————–

TOTAL 746 383 8 134 28 1915 5220 9.56

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

TOTAL SCORE : 7 135

Don Beattie G3BJ / G5W

10m conditions

10 Friday Mar 2023

Posted by nickg4fal in News

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Last night, Barry VK2BJ sent a text to say that 10m was open to EU on the long path. Indeed, great LP conditions from 1000 to 1030 UTC. Many UK stations worked.

This morning 10m was very good from 2030 to 2020 UTC to NA and on the LP to the UK. So, the Commonwealth Contest (BERU) could be good fun on the 10m band.

In contrast this week, the 80m band has been a poor performer compared to the last couple of weeks.

Good luck to all playing this weekend in the Commonwealth Contest.

73,
Allan Mason, VK2GR