[3830] Commonwealth G4PIQ Open-12 HP

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                    RSGB Commonwealth Contest

Call: G4PIQ
Operator(s): G4PIQ
Station: G4PIQ

Class: Open-12 HP
QTH: JO02OD
Operating Time (hrs): 12

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
   80:   34
   40:   60
   20:   65
   15:   84
   10:   74
------------
Total:  317  Total Score = 6,100

Club: 

Comments:

A very enjoyable weekend, operating from home, with just dipoles and 1 radio. 

I've had a particuarly difficult past few weeks at work which has meant that no
preparation had been done, and the much of the antenna was still lying in trees
/ bushes after the recent storms. I spent the start of morning and the first
hour of the contest getting the nest of 20/40/80m dipoles back up in the tree
and resonant. I operated for an hour from 11-12 and then took some off-time and
spent it trying to raise a build a separate nest of dipoles for 40/20/10 on a
50ft pole mast for the second radio. It was pretty windy, and even after two
attempts, at the end of the two hours all I had to show for my efforts was an
awful lot of wire and string knotted up in the budding trees and bushes. I
decided to dump the idea and push on with just a single radio which was
frustrating, but OK! The main antenna doesn't work well on 10 - I felt
particularly weak there - and obviously I often got beaten out in pileups on
all the HF bands from the folks with beams. 

The bands seemed good - I think 10 was better than last year, but 15/20 perhaps
not quite as good since they closed a little earlier. 80 was quite noisy and I
had a hard time copying the VK and ZL guys who called - so many thanks to them
for their patience and endless repeats. I have a short Beverage which was not
working during the SP VK opening. I fixed that in one off period during the
evening - all I can say is that there is something with big sharp teeth that
runs up and down our ditches - the RG58 was sliced clean through like a knife
had done it!

I didn't get my off-time planning quite right, I didn't pay enough attention to
20m - getting suckered into too much time on 10m and too much time fruitlessly
looking for DX on 80m

BERU is a great contest - completely different to the mainstream. There may not
be much rate from the UK, but there is plenty to keep your mind active
throughout the event, and during the early morning I was bouncing between all 5
bands looking for stuff and moving people. By the end of the contest - one of
the tuning controls on the amplifier was slipping from over-use.

Special thanks to all the travellers for BERU - without them it would be a much
less interesting contest - but our thanks are also due to the residents who also
turn up every year for this endeering contest. Also I must say thank you to all
the stations that moved bands for me - it's always slightly clunky with just
one radio / manual PA - and with my antennas it doesn't always come off - but
thank you for trying. 

73,

Andy, G4PIQ

K3 + PA

Inv-V Dipoles for 80/40/20 @ 18m


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