[UK-CONTEST] BERU 2008 - G0HVQ

[Darrell G0HVQ]

My first BERU, in fact my first HF CW contest in earnest - I've always been a bit wary as my CW's fairly rusty, but reading Gerry GI0RTN's article encouraged me to have a go.

The plan was to enter the 12 hour section, but that got blown away by a 4 year-old popping into her dad's shack throughout the day and disrupting things :-) So in the end I had 14 hours on the radio with no clear 1-hour breaks.

The equipment was a simple 100W to a multiband vertical (Hustler 4BTV) ground mounted.

Summary:
Band  QSOs
------------
80:    0
40:    23
20:    33
15:   12
10:    0
------------
Total:  68  Total Score = 1,540

Got off to a bit of a shaky start, with condx not at their best I found the 100W/vertical combination a struggle in some of the pile-ups, especially on 15m. Things improved later in the afternoon, when the 'big guns' had worked most of the DX and there were few/no pile-ups. Good to see 15m open so late, my last QSO was just before 1800.

Popped into the shack throughout the evening to have the odd QSO, then had a longer stint just before midnight on 40m when all the stations inc VK and the Caribbean were booming in. Got up early on Sun morning (6am, sunrise here in the UK) only to be bitterly disappointed - 40m was dead! Not quite, a few watery ZL signals, but way down in the noise. It was not until much later, 0730 and well after sunrise, that things picked up, and I think condx to VK/ZL peaked around an hour or so later - I had my last VK QSO at 0847. The back onto 20m to finish off, pleased to bag a couple of VKs just before 10am.

I did hear some weak signals on 10m, but not strong enough for any QSOs. And I didn't have an 80m aerial up.

Biggest 'gotaway' was VP8NO, who myself and a number of other locals heard at decent signal strength on 15m throughout Sat afternoon, but couldn't hear any of us.

On the whole, very enjoyable and I'll be back next year, with a bit better planning next time to get into the 12hr section. Was a bit disappointed to hear some jamming on Sat afternoon, but that seemed to be confined to the first few hours of the contest. I won't get up so early next year, well maybe I will but I'll get something up for 80m too.

Congrats to VU2PTT who has already uploaded his log to LoTW.

73
Darrell