One of only few travellers this year…

The BA flight get in around 5pm, except on Thursday, so I arrived on the late Cayman Airways flight Thursday from Miami (avoid!…) leaving all of Friday to get ready. However, the complexity of a modern remoteable contest station is such that you need help and driving lessons to get it going and to remember how to use it. I had I forgotten how much and to also include my remote instructor’s day duties in this timetable. In the end all was fine by 9p.m. local (02:00 UTC), but note to self – arrive late Wednesday next year….

I revised again why I seem to get behind the Big Canadians by the second hour and determined to make big efforts to fix this. The new plan was to work 80 to VE for a little at the start, then 40 to join the VK/ZL throng until moving to 20 for G earlier than has been my habit, this time by 10.45. It appeared to work this year and I was for the first time not running to catch up. Strategy or propagation? Probably both.

Propagation mostly seemed relatively normal from here at this time in the cycle, with 10/15 usually better than 20. One or two very distorted HF signals which needed slowing down for. However, the 80m midnight run to G was weak and watery with a medium topping of tropical QRN. Fortunately, much better in the morning although very few VK/ZL. Band hopping is still sometimes dependent on the other guy’s CW reading fears; if I can get them over this then its antenna dependent. I managed a couple of 4-band strings which is the true fun of this event. And I always kick myself for missing a few, mostly by bad timing when popping the question.

There was the normal run of pesky callers just ignoring BERU and the fact we are in some kind of hurry. That in particular comes over as rude.

The rise of the noise floors continues and instantaneous antenna choice was more often dictated as much by this as anything else. More beverages have been fitted here for this reason, although none to the West yet.

I have finally got the catering right, with just the right number of sandwiches, yogurt pots, bananas and mini tomatoes to last me through without left-overs. It was a medium year for the micro-ants who given the chance would be all over the used plate and which must be washed up immediately.

The 90-minute nap (advice from Gary ZL2IFB) at 02:00 UTC seems to work, with occasional falling asleep at the wheel at other times. Balanced eating (viz. not too much at any one time) seems to help the most with this.

Activity is our challenge as others have commented. The data mining exercise to non-BERU active contesters resulted in over 300 emails landing without bouncing and including about 25 VUs. It sounds like a few joined in; it will be interesting to scan the final published logs to see how many. But how to encourage more from South Africa, 9M and everywhere else? A question for the student. I hope Brian 9J2BO is ok?

Our traveller numbers are well down, from what I have established, mostly for personal reasons and saying ‘next year’. But we could certainly do with some fresh young intrepids.

Band      Qs           Bonus   HQ

80           81           11           5

40           192        49           11

20           204        46           12

15           221        44           12

10           170        42           10

872 Qs, 9145 DxLog points.

73, Colin ZF2CA/G4CWH/M3E

Hi All.
A new location this time, this year in Jamaica and back to verticals on the shore rather than a renta shack where you have little or no control on the setup.
My trusty telescopic + tape measure radials for 10-20M, a 1/4 wave vertical for 40M (2 elevated radials) plus an inverted-L for 80M, all within 10 meters of the sea.
It was nice for 10M to be open for a change, plenty of G’s and VE’s at least but only one VK and a couple of ZL’s..
20M seemed less impressive and I also noticed some raspy-ness and deep QSB on northern paths which gradually worsened over the weekend.
Much better this year on the LF bands for me, less man made QRN at this QTH but the ever constant thunder storms further north required a few repeats of serial numbers but otherwise much better QSO count than previous years, despite the seeming lack of the ‘run of G’s normally anticipated at UK sunrise on 80M but this may have been because I’d already worked most of them before then due to the improved antennas. It’s
Participation did seem a bit down on previous years, especially as regards travellers but maybe wait another year or two before giving up hope and changing the rules. I’m also against G’s working G’s but G’s working GM’s, GW’s etc may be worth thinking about, although this would change it into a bit more of a rate contest rather than a dx contest.. Lets just see how it pans out in the next few years.
Good to work so many G’s on all band slots.
Something must have been working right because I over doubled my QSO count on previous years especially on 80 & 40M but the 20M QSO count was disappointing.
One of my macros’s was ‘SRI ONLY BERU SRI’ which worked well but not always as ever, some were too persistent.

674 QSO’s in total less the few dupes and non BERU calls.

G4SGX/6Y – Restricted – Assisted

Band QSOs Pts Cty Sec Pt/Q
3.5 69 705 16 2 10.2
7 159 1575 36 4 9.9
14 150 1660 42 4 11.1
21 192 1860 40 5 9.7
28 104 1160 29 3 11.2
Total 674 6960 163 18 10.3
Score: 6,960
1 Mult = 3.7 Q’s

73 Iain G4SGX/6Y