So, here is an offering from way up north. I had high hopes for propagation and have never been on in BERU during high flux times – unfortunately, the forecast was correct – high K index before the start that seemed to take a serious edge off things. And the aurora on Sat evening really threw a spanner in the works.

My experience was similar to Don in many respects. I could hear JA on 10m before we started but it didn’t really seem to get going and 10 was a struggle. 15 was better but everything is relative. I made several tactical errors which cost me I think: I was trying to make interleaved CQs on two bands but this meant that I wasn’t listening in second direction on one of the bands so I think this cost me dxcc. I also spent too much time calling and not working much on 80 and 40 as VK/ZL had their SR and we had our SS. It was very disappointing, excepting ZL3AB on 80m with an excellent signal. This cost me time into VE and I did badly to the mid and west on 20, 15 and 10. Did catch VE7 late on 10 by beaming SW which often happens when we get hit by aurora.

There were some loud signals on 15 and 10 from VK and VE but, oh, such little activity. There were so many entities that you might reasonably have expected that I just simply never heard – only one station from Africa 5Z4VJ…………one!!

I just ran out of stations to work at 02z, slept a couple of hours, but only added two VE on 80m before SR, duped ZL3AB as the only ZL on 80m. About 0440 I noticed the SWR on my 80m vertical had shot up and the amp was objecting. I ventured out in rain and strong easterly wind to discover a broken loading wire and no fix possible – so it was a reconfiguring and the back up antenna for the remaining single scoring QSO!  40m LP was poor, poor. LP on 20m was better with a few new things. VK7WIA wasn’t making many friends sending at 20 wpm and not signing his call – but at least he was on and making QSOs. The morning was livelier than some previous that I recall, but I made only one scoring QSO after 0915.

Thanks to all the guys who moved on request – much appreciated. Several didn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t.

I really don’t know what to make of this contest. It’s good in the sense that almost all the QSOs we make from the UK are DX, are we are not expecting high rates, but the contest needs activity and that is simply not there. I suspect some of my perception of poor conditions is more down to poor activity. I was called by loads of Gs, many EU and also some juicy DX that was no use, and the other contests certainly made an impact. I don’t know if a rule change would help – yes, we could work inter-UK in some way but you have to wonder about the viability of the event overall when >90% of the DXCC entities are not represented, a full representation of HQ stations doesn’t materialize and general support from VE, VK and ZL is poor to pretty dire.

Sorry about the formatting – I can never get this neat

BAND   QSO DUP DXC  HQ  POINTS BONUS   AVG

——————————————–

   80    37   1  12   7     185   440 16.89

   40    74   1  21   9     370   880 16.89

   20   105   3  28  14     525  1320 17.57

   15    95   1  25  13     475  1160 17.21

   10    47   1  19  11     235   780 21.60

——————————————–

TOTAL   358   7 105  54    1790  4580 17.79

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

            TOTAL SCORE : 6 370

Professor Keith M Kerr,