As normal, I try to route to ZF via some business meetings. This year its Vegas and then Phoenix, far more similar climates to ZF than snowbound Reedsburg would have been and so simplifies my wardrobe.

The Phoenix meeting involved getting to a 6000 ft radio site and installing some experimental equipment. It is a civil utility site so my colleague and I were not allowed to ride in the customer vehicles but instead had to hire a big 4×4 and drive sandwiched between two of theirs for an hour of serious off-roading. I tried to explain to my team back home that this had been a hard day at the office but their attitude was rather similar to my school chemistry and careers teacher who once said he would inform future employers they would not have to pay me a lot as I enjoyed my work too much. Hmpf.

 

The engineers were kind in showing us all around the installation including the solar battery room which could keep everything up for two days or more. On going to enter the battery room I looked at him quizzically when he knocked before opening the door. Is someone living inside?

 

“Critters”, he explains, and on walking in showed me a large sticky pad with scorpions and large millipedes stuck to it. “Even those millipedes can give you a bite that will spoil your day” he explained. Apparently knocking the door scares them away. Then they told stories of a large rattle snake on site the previous week.

 

The customer’s diary meant we had to do this on the Wednesday and the indefinite end time meant planning for the final leg to ZF on the Thursday, which decoded as the 5 a.m. flight via Dallas, getting me into Zf1A late-afternoon Thursday and the very latest I wanted to arrive, remembering how complex the station has become. While stopping during the trip, and apart from grabbing the odd moment with Morse Runner, I was still trying to find a fifth member for Team World Travellers after Dom, M1KTA, discovered some grown-up admin challenges getting his licence for C5. Phoning and emailing for weeks previously had failed so he turned up in person and was promised it for later this week, after BERU. Forlorn, he gave up and travelled home. 

 

As usual Marty was good at finding time for me as US remote IT support in between his work meetings and getting to watch a hockey game. So there I am, helpless, while the expert dials in on Anydesk from his phone and sets things up whilst stationary in traffic. I want DxLog set up as SO2R on two K3s (one I left during covid and is now built in), but that’s not how the other ZF1A operators normally do it. After a few false starts I left (or risk missing dinner) but by Friday morning we are up. I familiarise myself again and prepare the 24 hours of snacks. (Note to self – four rounds of sandwiches is plenty). Prices in the shops here remain a constant surprise: mid-sized Gold Blend coffee is $10.99 and the big one $19.99. These numbers are always large and end .99

 

As usual various calls intervene. One caller was kind enough to apologise but I said it was normal and that BERU prep days seem to be magnets for interruptions and other ‘opportunities’.

Early to bed as there is a 3.30 a.m. wake-up call before driving 25 minutes to the station for the 5 a.m. start, but I was already stirring. One of my plaintive emails has been answered and Ivan 9H1PI as 9H6A is to complete Team World Travellers Plus (consisting travellers plus home stations).

 

What is it about BERU that creates such legal excitement, even in a (young) pensioner? I am ever fearful of messing up the first few minutes on 80, as I did one year with an idiot switching error. Blink and those first few contacts are gone.

 

As I have written, every year I find I appear on 20 with my score way behind the leaders and then have to work hard to try to catch up. This year I’ve been studying logs harder and may have spotted my error. I’ve been going via 40, soaking up VE/VK/ZL bonuses while they’re definitely around as it’s not clear they will be around later.  But the big VE guns have been going to 20 earlier and running hard. So, this year I did similarly, arriving at 10.45 expecting the normal pileup. Obviously, this was now too early as everything was weak and slow. Wondering whether I am wasting time, slowly it dawns on me that HF conditions are just not great. The G-run wasn’t awful, it was just not what it should be with signals and rate. However, I do run into VE3EJ on 75 to my 141 and CF3A on 138 to my 181, so the new strategy might be working? For his year at least. I have now also taken to changing gears more definitely between running the pileups at 30wpm and doing the rest of the contest slower, as Andy G4KNO pointed out, at the average speed of 24 and with a fair amount at 20.

 

15 wasn’t bad, and it is often the very best band to G and to VK/ZL. But the 10m G-run just never really happened.

 

With so many opting to do 12-hours the game is increasingly not one of propagation studies, but of propagation plus ‘being at their station’ predictions. It almost feels more like fishing than Amateur Radio, trying to lay down signals in places when people just might be about, and waiting. This is particularly noticeable on the VK/ZL paths on their Sunday morning. The world map is showing it is light and so definitely (well, probably) open on 20, and previously 40, but no signals. Zilch. When they do show up, they are loud, proving the point. But when they do, its ‘QSY them all!’ and I get cross and shouty if I fail to get the message across before they tune away. This year I had the impression more were ready for this, apart from those that just couldn’t read “QSY” at all but just repeated their exchange again and again.

 

10m remained challenging with only 29 contacts and not many very strong (though there were a few), so I quickly learned to QSY people there last, mostly to oblivion. VP9I, one of my own team mates, took me there to mine twice! Not a squeak either time, who’d have thought it.

 

VU and the Far East has always seemed elusive but there was one stunningly loud VU on 40 at 01:00

 

Night time (01:30z) this year was a proper graveyard shift so I took two hours kip instead of 90 minutes. Fortunately, the morning parade was good with decent openings on 80 and 40. I crept back to 20 on and off and ended there.

 

Points: 10,505. Hrs.: 22

Station: 2x K3, DxLog

Acom 2000, Elecraft KPA1500

Log periodic 40-10 at 30m

Big Triband pointed to EU at 20m

C31, 2-ele 80m all at 20m

Beverages at NW, N and NE

Bose QC35 wired (which can manage 24 hours on one charge, but needs a longer lead)

 

After the contest I attend the CARS club night if I can. This year it looked to be on the wrong week, but suddenly it turned out it wasn’t. My host Andrew Eden asked if I had a short talk handy as previous years, but I had nothing prepared. So having been dabbling in precious metals of late I decided to talk about silver and its uses in electronics and then segway to its other uses. This forced me to spend Monday reminding myself of the key facts:

• Silver is the best electrical conductor at 5% better than copper 
• It is also the best thermal conductor at 7% better than copper
• Because when plated is has lower surface roughness, microwave cavity Q can be 30% higher than copper
• It tends not to oxidize like copper but to sulphide up, but this is a better conductor than copper oxide and lowers Q less severely
• Gold is better for contacts as it does not corrode but has 50% higher intrinsic resistance
• Skin effect, where RF flows increasingly only on the outside of conductors at higher frequencies, means that at microwaves the plating needs only to be microns thick
• Litz wire also can help and can lead to dramatic increase in Q, up to about 2MHz.Traditionally it was used in IF coils but today is used in induction hob elements. Litz means ‘woven’ and brings the different conductors to the surface along the length and is another invention of the great Nikolai Telsa. Silver gives only modest improvements as skin effect is not so great. Why audiophiles like to use silver plated Litz wire is anyone’s guess.

Then I progress to silver having become far more expensive over the last couple of years and was going to make a joke about ISAs (a UK gvt personal tax-free wrapper for savings). I tried looking up what a Cayman equivalent is, but of course, they have no taxes. This means none of:

• Corporation tax
• Income Tax
• National Insurance
• Capital Gains Tax
• Inheritance
• Dividend tax
• Interest tax
• Wealth tax
• VAT

This obviously means there is no concept of an ISA. Nor tax collectors or inspectors. This idea of no taxes is starting to sound very appealing! Instead they run their economy by large import duties (hence the coffee prices), loading up businesses and especially the financial services industry, and tourism. The simplest description is of taxing what you spend instead of what you earn.

 

Employers and employees have to contribute into pensions at 5% each, employers must provide health insurance and pay at least 50% of the premium.

Anyway, for amusement I present a typical tax burden build up that Brits suffer. The ex-pats in the room of course were all too familiar and how they are ducking it, but the locals had never seen this and were visibly wincing as the number added up. I won’t repeat it here, but try it as an exercise calculating the additive tax burden you are living with. And then include your heirs.

 

The talk continued on the dramatic rise of silver and gold and their historic use literally as money. As I had elsewhere been shown, when turned it upside down it shows that the long-term buying power of gold thrashes about around a mean, but the buying power of the ‘fiat currencies’ (those not pegged to gold or any other standard) continues to fall and fall, but we are too used to this to notice. Ask yourself how much your grandparents paid for their house?

 

Interestingly the Qs and As seemed livelier than my usual talks on radio topics.

 

Club nights are different at every club. My local club Camb-Hams has no constitution and no committee; we all just turn up at the pub monthly for chats over a beer and a meal. And I nag about participants for the AFS contests.

 

Cayman Amateur Radio Society has structured monthly meetings with a written agenda, a start including minutes of the last meeting, apologies for absence, deals with the months business and has an end. The regular agenda includes ‘Testing the emergency radio’- a VHF and HF pair that are there ready in case of tornados taking out the formal telecoms networks, a real possibility and a lifeline to others off the island.

 

However, this year there is a hiatus. For some reason we are not meeting in the Red Cross hall but a church hall. I crack a joke about having been being kicked out by the nurses, which turns out be to a bit close to the bone: The new Red Cross director ‘doesn’t like Hams’, despite the island’s emergency radios and antennas being installed in his building and grounds. It seems this prejudice exists even in paradise.

 

Then the other universal theme: At field day the old hands are wondering where the younger volunteers are. Field Day involves going to the beach with equipment, I think both radio and barbeque.

“We gettin’ tired of doin’ all di hompin’” says one. “It’s time di yong ones learn how to homp it all down to di bich at 6.30 a.m. like we’ve always don!”.

 

‘Twas ever thus, and is true in other specialist clubs I belong to that seem to each enjoy the same demographic time bomb.