[UK-CONTEST] BERU

[Nick Totterdell]

Despite daily emails offering solutions, I have to confess that my
erection is quite small and therefore I can probably justify speaking on
behalf of those who can only achieve a QSO rate of a few per hour in the
Commonwealth Contest. Over the best part of 24 hours, I managed 131 QSOs
from a fairly sheltered location, with a 2 ele tribander on top of the
house and 80m and 40m dipoles running North/South in a downwards sloping
garden. Working ZS, ZL, VK, 9M, VE7, etc. at the lowest ebb of the
sunspot cycle is pretty exciting for me.

There doesn't appear to be a lack of G stations willing to put the
effort into Beru, despite having no chance of actually winning. The
existing rules at least provide a level playing field between UK
stations. Being able to work other UK stations will not improve the
contest. I entirely agree with Bob, 5B4AGN. More activity from outside
the UK will improve the contest; less will diminish it, and this is a
far more important consideration than giving UK stations higher scoring
opportunities. I also like the existing scoring convention, not having
multipliers but having bonus points means that less well endowed
stations can post a relatively high score, in my case, probably about
half that of the winning UK station.

I thought Gerry's article in Radcom was excellent and pretty well
summarised how things panned out for me in his predictions of
propagation. Hopefully the results will show an increase in
participation with some newcomers as a result.

73 de Nick, G4FAL