[UK-CONTEST] BERU 06

[G3WPH]

For me the first 10 hours went well then down hill from there.  Knowing that I would miss an important 5 hours starting 20:00 on Saturday because of a dinner party invitation I decided that I'd have to leave the John Dunnington award to Peter (G3LET) again and just be happy with the certificate for 69 band-call areas. I finished with 144 scoring QSOs:

80m  18
40m  36
20m  74
15m  13
10m    2

I was pleased to work VP8NO on 10m after changing band to listen for a station who was being moved there from 15m - didn't hear the station I QSYd for but did work Mike and GB5CC for my only two 10m QSOs.  Mike also thanks for the call on 20m in the lat hour - I had heard you a little earlier, working G3IAF I think and had tried to slide you HF a KHz but guess you didn't hear me.  As I think  xxx mentioned, the technique for us low power stations of 'enticing' a station to QSY a few Hz after a QSO with a big gun who is running is important and I don't think it's acceptable in a gentleman's contest like BERU (sorry Commonwealth).

I probably should have gone to bed when I got home at 12:30 Sunday morning - it was hard going with just 15 QSOs before 06:00 - I heard most of these stations after 06:00 anyway.  Where were all of the VEs on 80/40m?  Propagation existed because VE3EJ and the VO1s were good signals.  06:00 onwards was primarily VK & ZL with exception of J88 on 40m and VP8 on 20m.

A couple of lowlights were being dragged from the rig on Saturday evening as I was calling VQ9 on 40m and on early Saturday evening looking at the log and seeing that SDC had set the received serials on some (not all) HQ stations to 000. Having to back and try and work the stations again was the ultimate demonstration why we just work dupes and move on - having a conversation as to why you need to have a second QSO is just too difficult, but everybody did comply. Paul don't worry this was an old V11.13 SDC with an up to date CTY file. Just don't ask why I was using such an old version.  I usually use N1MM for contesting but do like SD for BERU.

Well I just made the 69 band-call areas (72) as long the UK (GB5CC) counts towards the total - this was my only 5 band station.

Equipment was FT-1000MP and 132' Inverted L plus 132' sloper (Helikite) for 80/40m night time session.

73

Mike
G3WPH