[UK-CONTEST] BERU 2005 - G3LET

[Peter Hobbs]

Hi folks,

Claimed score in Low Power Section for G3LET.  A total of 7 dupes and busted QSOs, remainder as follows:

                              80m      40m       20m     15m      10m    Total
Valid QSOs:          31         84          82        60         9         266
Bonus:                   20         60          66        42         9         197
Total Points:          555       1620      1730    1140     225      5270

TX/RX:                Tentec Omni VI Pro
Antennas:             200 ft long sloping wire supported from nearby sequoia tree, 
                            fed against ground with Racal MA144 tuner, plus
                            BiggIR vertical erected on 30 ft scaffold mast
Ground System:   16 x 8ft copper-clad rods disposed around the shack, 
                            welded to buried 50mm2 solid conductor
Logging S/W:       Trusty cardboard dupe/bonus sheets!

Comments:

What is it about BERU that exposes the gremlins year in and year out?  Discovered at the last minute that the lap-top on which SDC had been carefully set up (with tailored F-key messages and a hand-crafted master.dat file) was producing unacceptable noise on 15 (no other band).  After a period of disbelief, nothing for it but to settle down to a long-hand effort.  I'd recently moved the shack from the attic, with it's attendant boiler, broad-band and other noises, to a hut in the garden and hadn't done a thorough enough check - lesson well learned.

The decision to abandon the restricted section and go for the low power listing was easy - the linear is still awaiting a T/R relay after going S/C key-down a few weeks back.

Conditions from here were a lot better than expected, especially on the receive side, with some amazing signals from VE on 80 and 40 and propagation well into the west coast on 15.  Actually I'm not sure if this was really improved conditions or the fact that the new shack location had been chosen to slope the wire antenna down in a NE direction (previously E by S), especially as raising the Africans in particular was often a struggle.  Even after spending some time planning antennas it's still a shock when they appear to work as intended!  Comparing my totals with other posts there was clearly not enough attention paid to 10, but nobody ever came back to a CQ on that band and most of the time, as John says, it was inhabited only by the few stations already worked.  I never QSY people as a matter of policy.  The two Caribbean stalwarts were well appreciated, but these seemed to be the only expeditions this year and several regulars were also missing.  VK6LW and 5B4AGN made welcome guest appearances in the last hour or so.

Lack of automation made it tough staying awake in the small hours, but things picked up around dawn.  Apart from a couple of short sessions, CQing was pretty much a waste of time, as mentioned by others and I had better results this year from enticing bonus callers (even a few unsuccessful ones!) to the big guns off to one side.   During the night the outside temp went down to -2.5C and the hastily installed oil filled radiator didn't reach my fingers; apologies to those who had to suffer the keying aberrations.

Thanks to all for the QSOs.

73

Peter
G3LET