[UK-CONTEST] BERU 2011

[Peter Day]

Hi Chris..

Many thanks for the useful comments on my planned trip to VP2V. Yes I 
fully indeed to get the whole system up and running before the end of 
September as I don't want to be trying out antennas in the garden here 
during the winter!

The main aim of the trip is to seem my son who went to work at the 
beginning of this year as i/c maintenance at the Last Resort, a 
restaurant on a small island (a little bit large than a rugby pitch!!) 
just 400 metres off shore from the airport at Beef Island. I had 
originally planned to go over on my own and operate CC from the 
restaurant using verticals which will be just feet from the water's edge 
but now have changed plans and have arranged, through my lad, to rent a 
house up in the hills behind the Trellis Bay with steep slopes downhill 
from the house and a fantastic view to the north through north east to 
east... great for  Eu, VE, 5B4 and over into the Far East. I can have 
unlimited antennas there and have been promised several poles/masts. 
Also it will be free of RFI/EMC problems (no neighbours) unlike the 
restaurant location where  I might get breakthrough into their PA 
systems (they have a nightly band!!). I'm also now taking my XYL so we 
can have a holiday as well :-).

My only small, lightweight transceiver is an IC706Mk2G and I can't at 
the moment justify buying something more contest orientated like a K3 
(one is on my wish list!). I have an FT950 and Acom PA for home station 
use but have no wish to take that :-). I tried the 706 last weekend in 
the YO CW contest and it worked quite well but I need a 500Hz cw filter 
as the 350Hz one is rather too narrow for tuning around. I've just 
ordered one. During the contest I found the 706 has a heating problem 
under sustained contest conditions and I'm going to fit an extra fan on 
the rear heatsink to see if that helps. If that's not good enough then 
I'll have to bite the bullet on a new rig :-)

I do a lot of contesting from home so am all set up with the laptop, 
wintest, computer keying etc.

By the way, I believe you and I have something in common... teaching in 
ZL. I was ZL2BDA in Gisborne from 1966-68 and ZL2LA in Upper Hutt from 
1975-80. I used to think ZL wasn't all that rare until I went out there 
and spend most nights trying to shake off the JAs and UAs while I was 
trying to keep skeds with UK!

Thanks again and 73

Peter G3PHO

PS: enjoyed your talk in the Contest Uni at last years RSGB Convention.




On 31/08/2010 16:34, Chris Tran GM3WOJ wrote:
> Hi Peter
>
> I think you'll say to yourself 'why didn't I do this years ago?'. There
> are many others on here with more experience of contest DXpeditions than
> me but my advice would be :
  <snip>