[UK-CONTEST] BERU 2004 de G0WAT

[Paul Brice-Stevens]

Its a few years since I have done BERU and I kick myself for not 
arranging more time to play in it...it seems to distil a lot of the 
facets which I find most enjoyable about contesting...its CW (which 
despite rampaging QLF on my part still retains that element of the 
difficult things in life are often the most rewarding)...nearly 
everywhere is far, far away in this contest...for my part there will 
never be anything in the contesting world, aside from perhaps a really 
good run, to beat hearing your callsign flashing through the ether from 
someone on the other side for the world...the knowledge that ones 
inability to keep pace with the G4BUO's/PIQ's/AB's/IVZ's of the UK 
contesting scene matters not a jot as you soldier on up and down the 
bands looking for those elusive mults - the real competition is 
oneself...the thrill of finding a VK6VZ on an otherwise quiet 10m band 
at his sunrise...the cut and thrust of working 9M2/GM4YXI through the 
pile-up on 20m...digging 7Q7BP out of the noise for a new one...I 
suppose it will never be one for the rate monkeys, but it has a definite 
'character' and there are many great contests which do not posses that 
indefinable quality...


so enough of the pseuds corner blather from me...next year I really must 
try and do more of it!

Q's 41
Mults 41
Points 1025*

* As I used the event to try out N1MM software (using WPX Mode) I have 
totted the claimed up by hand so quite frankly this figure could be as 
wrong as it is right.

I operated a rather broken and distracted 7-8 hours on and off with 100w 
on 10m/15m/20m and 20w on 40m and 5w on 80m...Antenna was a 60ft doublet 
fed with O/W to a 4:1 balun at about 25ft - 30ft for most of the 
event*...it was a bugger to load on 40/80 hence the low power, most of 
which I suspect was going into heating up the ATU and/or going to lock 
my computer up.

I noticed that my signal did not seem so clever in the morning 
session...when I went outside after the event I noticed that one of the 
legs of the O/W had become detached...surprising that I was getting out 
at all!

73
Paul G0WAT
-- 
Paul Brice-Stevens