[UK-CONTEST] BERU from V47CD

[Nick Totterdell]

 BAND   QSO DUP DXC  HQ  POINTS BONUS   AVG 
--------------------------------------------
   80   158   0  20   3     790   800 10.06 
   40   246   1  26   4    1230  1080  9.39 
   20   151   3  29   4     755  1060 12.01 
   15    42   1  13   5     210   520 17.38 
   10     2   0   2   0      10    40 25.00 
--------------------------------------------
TOTAL   599   5  91  16    2995  3500 10.84 
============================================
            TOTAL SCORE : 6 495

For me this was a second Commonwealth Contest from the Caribbean paradise of
Rawlins Plantation Inn, St Kitts. 
This location is free of overhead power cables - the curse of the Caribbean
- and is on the northern slopes of the active volcano Liamuiga. We hiked to
the rim on Tuesday after the contest and saw a little puff of smoke in the
crater!
I arrived at the luxurious bungalow, where I was to operate, at 5:30am to
find two aerials on the ground as nails had pulled out of a softwood tree;
thankfully, the lines which supported them were still in place and within 10
minutes, under the light of my head-torch, the aerials were back at 40 feet
or so - suspended again from the tall tropical trees.

Radio
My FT897 (barefoot) worked quite well. The front end doesn't behave when
there are lots of stations calling - this is not a huge Beru problem - but
is difficult for normal dxpedition operation. Outside Beru I followed advice
from Phil, G3SWH, opening the filters and winding the RF gain down until I
could pick out individual stations. The RF gain on the 897 is a bit weird -
it cuts out at about 30% position, but this made running possible with quite
big pileups.
A couple of quirks came to light:
1. It is almost impossible to turn the radio on if the CAT port is being
poled.
2. If you put your fingers near the RF or AF gain knobs while sending, you
get RF feedback into the CW monitor.

Aerials
R6000 Cushcraft vertical for 20, 15 and 10
20, 15 and 10 dipoles on a common centre, suspended about 40ft up between
trees, east/west
80 and 40 dipoles on a common centre, suspended about 40ft up between trees
northwest/southeast

Bands
10m - very quiet but worked John VP8KF and Dave J88DR. For the contact with
Dave in St Vincent, I had a quick look on this almost silent band and heard
a PY station calling CQ - having recently heard Dave on 15m, and as St
Vincent is in much the same direction as PY, I went down and asked him to
try 10m.
15m - Most of Canada, some ZL and ZS, but nothing from Europe despite a few
attempts. The dipole was best for most contacts.
20m - Pretty good but without rotatable directional aerials I was a bit down
on other Caribbean stations. The vertical was better for DX and the dipole
better for Canada.
40m - Easily my best band as my dipole was on a par with most other stations
80m - Also very good with more Qs than 20m

General
It was disappointing to have no contacts with any station in the Indian
Ocean region. Also VK contacts were down on last year.
I had some very persistent non Beru callers. With the US I generally tried
"SORI BERU TODAY PSE CALL MONDAY" but I also used the old chestnut "SORI
1776" or "US HAS NO QUEEN HI". I felt terribly guilty when one station was
very politely apologetic! I worked about 1500 outside the Beru period so I
think I gave the non-commonwealth countries a good shot.
A couple of non-contest stations were possible to work - V25WY and V31WV
(who only gave me a serial number on 80m).
VO1RAC was only worked on a single band. I found him on 40m at 10UTC Sunday,
but this was just too late.

Wintest
This worked well but I wasted quite a bit of time trying to edit a contact
to change its band. This seems to be impossible. I got into this state by
QSYing from 20 to 15 for a contact before hitting enter, but I only
discovered this later and by then the contact was locked to the wrong band.

Thanks to everyone for the QSOs - I will put the log onto LOTW shortly - so
no need to QSL for DXCC credits but you are very welcome to a pretty card if
you would like one.