Monthly Archives: March 2024

Thanks to all who manned the UK HQ calls G_6XX and GB5CC …

10 Sunday Mar 2024

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… at the weekend, it’s possibly the best show for years. Thanks to John for rescuing GM6XX at the last minute and hope Terry gets sorted asap. Also to Bob ‘YOX for finding some time to put on GU6XX but mainly just thanks to everyone and well done….

After doing GW6XX for recent years it was a nice change to operate ‘native’ for a change – it feels very different if a little tedious at times. I was glad to be ‘self-employed’ in the deathly quiet wee small hours on auto CQ when I noticed through the brain fog that nothing was coming out of my amp. Seemed a definite fault so it was a quick re-design to run barefoot; except for some longer waits to raise VKs/ZLs on 80/40 and late appearances of fresh meat VEs it probably made little difference to my end result. Roger at DXshop reckons it’s knackered input switching diodes so he’s sending me replacements to fit. Fingers crossed.

73, Stew GW0ETF / GW4J

Stew

G4PIQ

10 Sunday Mar 2024

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Operated in the Mother’s Day + Visitors 12 hour category so didn’t manage to make the full 12 hours and certainly didn’t have my complete choice of operating times, so some important openings – especially the one to Western VE on 15/20 during our evening. Just over 11 hours in the end.

Conditions not as good as hoped – especially on 10m on Saturday – with the band barely opening to VE. Sunday morning there was a nice opening to VK. On Saturday evening on 20m and 40m, some signals were almost completely auroral – and noticeably rougher when listening with the Rx antenna pointed North. I also thought that activity was down a bit this year.

A nice 80m opening to VK at their sunrise, but only ZL3AB on 80m at their sunset – though he was a good signal.

Only two wire dipole antennas again and more compromise with the configurations this year forcing me to use the poorer lower antenna too much on 40 and 15 and the manual tune amp to handle the 4:1 SWR on some bands – but hopefully enough worked in the end.

Many thanks to everyone for the QSOs, and especially to those who kindly moved for me when asked.

2 x K3 + Ten Tec Titan + Alpha 87A. 1kW.
Inv-V Dipole for 80 & 20 + 3WL/2 on 40m @ 20m + Inv-V Dipole @ 12m for 40m. K9AY

73

Andy, G4PIQ

Late change to the Australian team

09 Saturday Mar 2024

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Please note that there has been a late change to the Australian team participants.  Below is a summary list of all the teams and HQ stations as per the information available from the G3PJT Commonwealth Costest site.

https://berucontest.wordpress.com/2024/03

Team GE:
M5DX    Nick   G4FAL
G3BJ     Don
G4FNL   Graham
G3P        Mike   G3WPH
G4PVM   Paul

Team World Traveller Plus:
5Z4VJ    Andy  G3AB
6Y6YI    Mike  G3VYI
9H6A     Ivan  9H1PI and John 9H1XT
G4SGX/6Y Iain  G4SGX
ZF2CA    Colin G4CWH

The Quake Contesters:  
ZL3P     Phil  ZL3PAH
ZL3AB   Mark
ZL3GA   Geoff
ZL3DMX  Don
ZL4TT   Paul

Australia One:
VK6T    Kevin  VK6LW
VK2BJ   Barry
VK2GR   Allan
VK4M    Alan   VK4SN
VL6T    Steve  VK6VZ

Australia Two:
VK7BO   Alan  
VL6M    Phil   VK6GX
VJ3A     Steve  VK3JA
VK5GG   Graeme
VK6NU   John

HQ Stations:
GI6XX   Richard GI4DOH
GM6XX   Terry  GM3WUX
GW6XX   Martin GW4XUM
GB5CC   Chris  GM3WOJ
GU6XX    Bob    GU4YOX
VA2RAC  Dub    VE2FK
VK2WIA  Dave  VK2WQ and Patrick VK2PN
VK3WIA  Lee    VK3GK
VK4WIA  Keith  VK4TT
VK5WIA  Grant  VK5GR
VK6WIA  Peter  VK6RZ
VK7WIA  Martin VK7GN

Good luck with your operation in the contest.

73,

Allan Mason, VK2GR

Countries in the Commonwealth

08 Friday Mar 2024

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The 56 countries in the British Commonwealth are Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belize, Botswana, Brunei, Cameroon, Canada, Cyprus, Dominica, Eswatini, Fiji, Gabon, Ghana, Grenada, Guyana, India, Jamaica, Kenya, Kiribati, Lesotho, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Malta, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nauru, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, The Bahamas, The Gambia, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Uganda, United Kingdom, Vanuatu, Zambia.

Announced operations for BERU

08 Friday Mar 2024

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Hi,

I’ve attached a pdf of the announced operations for BERU, mined from https://berucontest.wordpress.com/

There will be other stations to work of course, but these are the announced ones. See if you can fill in all the boxes!

I do this every year as a check on who I should be working. And N1MM doesn’t do a very good job of tracking HQ bonus stations, so I like to tick them off.

Hope everyone has fun tomorrow.

73 Andy, G4KNO.

beru_2024_callsDownload

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