Hi Bob,

Good to work you on Conditions here were really disappointing – I had been expecting much better.  Here in NZ BERU starts at 11pm and that is well past my bedtime these days so I decided to have an early night and start earlyish.  After a very necessary strong long black (coffee) I was actually ready to go at 17:50z.  Checked 15m, made a couple of Qs with G but not much going on so down to 40m and my first VK then onto 20m for the next hour with a run rate of about 1Q/min and mostly G but very surprised and pleased to work ZD7BG and 9H1CG.  Then switched to 15m with a good run of G & VE.  For the next couple of hours on 10/15/20m I worked a steady stream of G/VE/VK then time for a one hour break and more coffee and breakfast.  More of the same on 10/15/20m but the run rate was well down.  Nice to work G4SGX/6Y.  By now the run rate had really slowed down and didn’t pick up again until 05:00z when 40m opened here to VK/VE and G.  The signals on 40m were extremely distorted here, far more than normal in the early evening,  and I note that many ops were not even waiting for an exchange repeat but were just sending it several times.  There will be many busted Qs I think during this period.  I finally pulled the plug at 07:30 having decided I would put in a 12 hour assisted high power log.  Sadly nothing heard here on 80m but I really didn’t give it much of a chance.  I never my band planning quite right but always promise myself that next year I will do better.

My sincere thanks to the HQ stations and travellers without whom BERU would be a total slog.  Maybe it is time to look at the scoring?  I do think it is illogical that UK cannot work itself but VE/VK/ZL can work others outside their own call area, (although from a ZL perspective there are so few taking part here that this doesn’t really make any difference).  Again from a ZL perspective 5 points for a contact with G after the first 3 Qs on a band is a lot of effort for a poor return – we are better off working as many call areas in VK/VE as we can.  However the HQ stations definitely balance some of this out.  Maybe it is time for different UK countries to be able to work each other (but not themselves) and to count in the same way as VK/VE/ZL call areas.  And for the rest of us to get points for each UK country worked.  I haven’t thought about this too much and would not want to alter the flavour of BERU which as we all know is very addictive, which I guess is why we keep on coming back.  I offer this suggestion only as a possible way of enhancing activity, and am interested to hear what others think. 

My score from N1MM …

Band     QSOs     Pts  Cty  Sec  Pt/Q

     7      50     730   18    4  14.6

    14      74    1130   30    7  15.3

    21      64    1020   32    6  15.9

    28      43     795   26    5  18.5

Total     231    3675  106   22  15.9

Score: 3,675

Equipment

K3S + SPE 1k5 800W out (temp never got above 40C)

Ultrabeam VL640,  2 el on 40m, 3 el on 20-10m

73 Phil zl3p/zl3pah