1. I like this contest a lot. It does not matter to me that my reasons are selfish and of “make me feel better” kind – we all deserve a little boost now and then. I consider myself not even a “small pistol” amongst “big guns” but rather a “pellet gun” or a “BB gun”. The format audience and scoring system of the BERU contest all work very well to rub my fragile ego the right way. “Linear” rather than “exponential” scoring does not leave the weaklings with a typical for other contests minuscule fraction of the winner’s result. Feeling more like one is “in the game” works for me.

2. 12 hours vs 24 hours. It has been many attempts now and I have yet to put in a “full-time” effort. One reason is that I am officially a senior now. The other is my setup resulting in what I can hear drying up rather quickly with subsequent long periods of “nothing to work” drudgery. The scoring format helps in that decision too: there is always a chance that you stumble upon a juicy bonus pointer in the midst of a desert (or in the emptiness of an ice floe). So 24 hours it is even though this year I put in just over 17 and again found myself asleep in the chair towards the end.

3. Conditions I think were significantly down from the last year. One of the CCO members has rightly asked “OK who gave the 10m band the day off???” Also 80m was extremely noisy here likely some exchanges logged will turn out not to be correct. So be it you can’t be asking for repeats forever.

4. Well there is always “next year”. And I am looking forward to it!

VE3BR

Good morning Bob,

What a pleasant surprise to find your email when I opened my mailbox this morning. 

This comes 50 years after making it to 5th place in the 1974 BERU Contest. I first took part in the contest in 1971. BERU was very different then as was the equipment used. It was a 48 hour contest and my first participation was made with an AR88 receiver, a home brew 2×807 cw transmitter, and a wet strings on the roof. TX/RX antenna switching was manual and the home brew electronic keyer was a bit of a marvel in itself, with a modified switch from a telephone system used as a paddle, but given your G3 callsign you probably know all about this. Nonetheless, around 450 QSOs were made. By the time 1974 came, a Trio TS510 was in use and this time round an ICOM IC7300.

Band conditions were not at their best this time round, but did provide some good dx QSOs. I would love to see some more Commonwealth countries participating in BERU. There is activity, though not as much as in the old days, but there are stations across the Commonwealth who could easily put in an appearance if not be there for the whole contest. Unfortunately CW activity has declined across the board, and disappointing band conditions in this and last cycle have not helped either.

I will let you have that picture you requested by this weekend.

73, Joe 9H1CG

One idea I had was to make up a more interesting results package. Put simply this would be a combination of the RadCom report ( comes out in June /July) with the results table from HFCC pages, but could include a bit more of general interest e.g. soapbox comment.

This combined results package would be sent via email to all non UK entrants and other participants. Also we could encourgae non-UK contest clubs to carry some of this.

I guess this would need some co-operation from RSGB/RadCom but could help their international membership positioning too.

73 Bob G3PJT

To paraphrase an advert from some years ago, “You’ve read the best now read (one of the) rest”….. 

Did my usual Jolly Jaunt to the Isle of Wight for a Restricted SOU section BERU entry from the top of the cliffs near Brighstone …. :

80m – 9 QSOs 

40m – 32 QSOs

20m – 41 QSOs

15m – 40 QSOs

10m – 7 QSOs.

Antennas were a 14AVQ (40/20/25/10m) and 40ft vertical (80m).

No original comments on conditions in addition to these already made (and with which I pretty much agree). Survived the contest itself on 3 Pot Noodles and a couple of Bovril sandwiches plus lots of cups of tea…although meals in the local hostelry on Friday and Sunday nights did help.  

But the real point of making a report at all is to say that I concur with the views already expressed that although something needs to be done to re-energise BERU, I think that the “UK works UK” proposal would be counterproductive, and that as Steve GW0ETF so well describes it, it would end up as a glorified all band CC! One of the great things about BERU is that it is HARD (for us little antenna merchants anyway) and allowing a (relatively) easy option would risk destroying the current essence of the event.. But that said I can’t think of any viable  alternative (sad or what?!)

73 and looking forward to next year, Quin G3WRR   

Hi Bob

Hope all is well with you, thanks for the QSO’s on the weekend, a good signal from you as always. Below is a link to my latest podcast with a wrap up of BERU from my perspective. 

73’s Kev

ome delayed afterthoughts from me…

Activity seemed down here both normal punters and travellers. A fine turnout of HQ stations from VE, VK and the UK – I publicly thanked the UK crew as it was my job to fill that particular list but all deserve our appreciation of course. Great job all round!

This was my first time for several years as a normal entrant and I enjoyed the completely different feel to being an HQ despite the slow death that set in from the early hours of Sunday morning here. This coincided with my amp falling over and requiring re-jigging to 100w barefoot. I suspect it made precious little difference. (since found the coupling capacitor at the rf input in a sorry state). The contest does feel in need of some attention but what? I wouldn’t like to see UK countries treated separately (GW work G and vice versa etc) as I suspect it would feel more like an all band 80m CC with a smattering of dx from here or GM, GI etc. The Commonwealth Contest is a contest with a unique feel for all its faults. There are plenty of speed contests already and I don’t think we should turn this into another. Some careful measured thoughts required I’d say – are some of the travelling set now getting too old for standing in airport queues before being packed like sardines onto a plane for example? The many tiny Commonwealth entities undoubtedly rely on travellers but what about the huge populations in VU and 9M which must have some CW contesters lurking?

Impressions here were best band 15m, mediocre on 10m, ok on 20 and decent on the low bands. I should pay more attention to learning about propagation because it probably costs me points in this contest but Steve GW0GEI normally does that when he’s here. So it surprised me when I first checked 40m at 1715z and heard and worked VK6T with an impressive signal; Kev ended up being one of my eleven 5-banders.

IC-7610 + Gemini HF-1K (most of the time). Hexbeam and verticals high bands; 40m vertical, 80m dipole around 14m

 BAND QSO BONUS HQ DUP POINTS AVG

———————————

   80  25    12  7   0    125 5.0

   40  49    21 10   0    245 5.0

   20  80    38 13   0    400 5.0

   15  85    35 10   0    425 5.0

   10  20    14  6   0    100 5.0

———————————

TOTAL 259   120 46   0   1295 5.0

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

        FINAL SCORE: 4 615

(Ignore the final 2 columns). DxLog appears to score this contest correctly and tells me I was at my post for 21.5 hours

73, Stew GW0ETF / GW4J