[UK-CONTEST] Beru 2009

[brian coyne]

As we enjoy good sunshine here in Cyprus most of the year we like to take our holidays during our winter, Jan to early March. Last year I operated as 9M6LSE from Borneo island.
 
This year I started to look around for something similar in the asia region (VK9,Cocos, came into consideration, I see someone turned up from there) but finally decided to schedule a return home in time for beru from 5B land and pleased that I did. It is hard to be competetive from south east asia for this contest and especially in the tropics all bands below 10mtrs suffer absorbtion for 3 hours or so either side of local noon and even 10mtrs is not much use to them at this stage of the solar cycle. As can be seen from final qso tallies of participants from this island  it has to be one of the best locations for beru. Will we see a future proposal to apply a minus factor adjustment to our scores!?
 
My contest started with a real bang - 84 q's in the first hour on 20mtrs - surely this can't be beru? 15 mtrs was open to uk for a spell plus there were many openings to africa and brief ones to asia/vk. Sunday morning was dismal on 20m with almost no propagation  to anywhere, other than a 20 minute window to uk, but again they were very brief, and there were short openings to VU, asia and VK on both 10 & 15m.
 
On the lf bands as a low power station it is a case of plugging away, trying to run is not too productive but in this respect beru is one of the better contests as the bands are less busy so you can get a bit of room and are not covered by the wide sigs from the guys with the amps so when guys are searching they do have a chance to find we little pistols. I was very pleased with the end results which were way beyond my expectations.
 

My 5 and 4 banders were practically a mirror image of P3F (and yes Alan I did hear you sending your 5B4AHJ callsign on another occaision!)
Highlights - As Don, G3BJ, has stated I also made a conscious effort to move people this year and was largely successful although there were a few missed opportunities, this mainly happens in the adrenaline of running but after all it takes a brief period to move and return to that run qrg. Anyway moving Jim VQ9JC up from 20m to 15m & then !0m and then later from 40m down to 80m. Likewise with VK9AA, although not unfortunately  the low bands in his case. What I fail to understand is that you come across some who are cq'ing and lonely, so why do they respond 'later' to a qsy request? - beats me. There is not only the propagation risk to 'later' but also  the chances of being in different places, running or searching at the same times, If someone asks me  I always respond positively.
 
The performance of my 80mtrs antenna. The day before beru I lashed up a quarter wave wire to the top of the hf mast which goes up to 50' extended. I grounded the outer coax to the mast
and tied off the  wire element to the roofrack of my car parked in front of the house, the angle of the wire was about 45deg. At the time I didn't have a lot of hope but it did resonate first time around and on Friday evening did work ET3JA so there was some hope after all. Result, lot's of vk/zl/ve stn's plus the carribean boys in the log when I had only realisticaly expected the big gun G boys. Would mention here what a window breaking signal from Nigel 6Y8XF on 80m, what was he using? He even had UA0 guys calling him at what would be their sunrise!
Lowlights - not many, after all we didn't anticipate good hf cndx and the low bands provided plenty. In my case it was the frustration, mainly on 80, of hearing 7Q7, 9J2, 5X1 ZS, VP8 and not being able to raise them with my 100w to get those 5 banders, I know they get bad static down those parts so only the 'big' signals get through.
Raw scores after dupes:-
10Mtrs  11qso   11 bonus
 
15Mtrs  84qso   34 bonus
 
20Mtrs 200qso   48 bonus
 
40Mtrs 147qso   47 bonus
 
80Mtrs  72qso   22 bonus 
 
Total qso 514
 
TOTAL POINTS  5810.
 
Equipment - Rig Kenwood TS570. Power 100W
Antennas -  3 ele tribander @ 50'
            Dipole for 40Mtrs
            Quarter wave sloper for 80Mtrs.
 
As always it was great, it was fun and that is why we were all there!
Thanks guys for the qso's.
 
73  Brian  C4Z.    (5B4AIZ/G4ODV)