[UK-CONTEST] July RadCom - BERU

[Bob G3PJT]

Thanks Brian for your 'tangled tale' but unfortunately you have a few 
mistaken impressions regarding BERU I would like to correct.

The 'Committee', the 4 of us (Les, Peter, Dave and myself) who try to 
manage BERU, meet annually to review the current year and plan ahead for
the next year and beyond. From the soapbox comments ( always too many to 
reply to individually) we have concluded that at the moment we have a
good balance between interest, growth in participation and originality.
Have a look at the analysis on the website www.beru.org.uk and you can 
see that we have had a steady growth in entrants (let alone
participation). All this despite the collapse in solar activity which 
you might have thought would have killed off a 'DX' as distinct from a
'rate' contest.
There is no cause for complacency however. As you can see by looking at 
the graphs there is an urgent need to try and stimulate  participation
 in VK and ZL.
At our annual meeting we always consider rule changes and indeed in 
2005/6 we had an in-depth discussion of possible changes.
These discussions led to the Team contest. (Just for the record it was 
Steve VK6VZ who originally made the team suggestion and the Committee
 who worked out a scheme we could implement.)
We have in addition introduced some awards for Travellers and the 
various categories etc like 12 hour/ Restricted and these too have been 
very successful judging by comments made.

Here is a typical Soapbox quote:
"Always good fun, some good low band contacts made up for poor hf condx.
Incredibly loud sigs from 6Y8XF on 40/80. It was a thrill to work 2 VK's 
on the lightning brief openings on 10M. "
Sounds like a satisfied customer. Lemme see, it was by C4Z ?

Anyway I have a bit of bad news for you - you were actually 24th not 
23rd! ;-)
 
Anyway Brian you ought to be able to get into the top ten with a call 
like C4Z!!

73 Bob G3PJT