[UK-CONTEST] BERU

[Andy swiffin]

>>> "G3WVG" <g3wvg at lycos.co.uk> wrote on 12/03/2006 12:16:00:
>..  When will the sun finally set on this Empire 
> contest
> I wonder.
> 

I think it might already have done.

>>> Kevin Martin <g6fop at ntlworld.com> wrote on 12/03/2006 20:06:10:
> BERU is still relevant today as it gives the low power/ simple
antenna 
> stations a chance to work a Contest without all the Bad Manners all
to 
> often seen on other contests. As a point of interest I have appended


IMHO, it's probably more likely to put people with low power and simple
antennas off!!

So that was the famous Bero contest?  Maybe conditions were better if
you were further south?  (i.e. in England) although Chris WOJ seems to
have done OK!

>From the word go it was snowing here, although wetter snow on Saturday
so not so much noise from it - Sunday was drier snow and settling to 6
inches so quite hashy, not that there was an awful lot to hear!

Anyway, from the start I found 10 people to work in the first two
hours, so went shopping.  A stint from about 14Z to 18Z wasn't too bad -
9M2CNC was tremendous signal on 40, but only 1 VK on 20 and no ZLs
heard.  I didn't bother with Saturday evening, sounds like that was a
mistake? 

For a rare event I got up really really early and was on the radio by
8AM , just kidding...  Started at 5AM having had to wade through the
snow to the shack.  I had a listen round 40 and 80 and wondered if the
aerial was disconnected - no, must be still there plenty of snow hash. 
Where was the dx on 80?  Only a couple of local VEs were audible.

40 wasn't too bad with a few reasonable signals from ZL although
getting through the G pileup was rather hard going.  I wouldn't mind
pileups so much if they were like the Tesco meat counter and you took a
ticket and watched the queue going down - I just always seemed to be at
the end of the queue!  I spent half an hour trying to get ZL2AZ but gave
up - V31JP was pretty much the same although he was hitting S9 on the
meter.   Strangely the minute after giving up on the above I found  a
station just finishing a qso and was sure the call was VK something but
hadn't copied it.  I accidentally clicked the callsign send button
rather than wipe (to get rid of zl2az) and suddenly found myself
sending, I  lunged for the escape key and managed to kill it after just
GM had gone out.  Not to worry - no one will have heard the gaff.   And
then suddenly there's this GM? GM? ? coming through the phones.  It
turned out to be vk7gn and I had the embarrasment of having to ask him
his call (don't you hate it when people insist on calling people when
they don't know who they're calling .....).   So how come I spend half
an hour fruitlessly sending my callsign to some people and someone else
grabs me after getting just half a prefix......

Anyway, it wasn't all bad - 6 ZL qsos in the log - more than I've ever
had in 1 session (yes, it may be a surprise to some bigrigs but life as
a little pistol is lean).  Prize for the best ears must go to ZL4BR who
managed to pick out my call on 20 after only about 3 or 4 goes despite
him being really weak and fluttery with me.  It was also rather quaint
to have some non 599 contest reports in the log, a couple of people were
sending a much more realistic 559 (319 might have been nearer still !)

So,  God bless those ex pats who brightened up my little log book, but
with only 40 QSOs from this one  I don't think I'll ever take it
seriously,  apart from a brief appearance to pick up the exotics.

I think it would be really interesting in contest reports if those who
_do_ work loads of stuff post an hour by hour breakdown showing roughly
what  they work on which band, something like:

0500-0600  40m: VK3,VK7,ZL2,vp9  80m: Zl2, Vk3, VE6, VE7,
0600-0700 20M:ZL3  40m: Zl4,VK9,
etc etc etc

to give an idea of what you _can_ work where and when, I would find it
particularly useful.  (the above not taken from my log as its at home
:-)

73
Andy
gm8oeg (where more snow is forecast for this afternoon...)
Ts830,  20M +40M dipole at 25 ft,  30ft Inv L