Travellers Tales podcast

Afternoon Bob, 

Here is a link to the ‘Travellers Tales’ episode 

73’s Kev 

Band changing in the Gambia

What I forgot to mention was that Alan’s multiband Dipole uses links, so a QSY required climbing up on the neighbouring roof to change. No instant band changing!

73 Don G3XTT

Post Contest wrap up VK side

Hi Bob

Try this one, it should be a bit more website friendly 

Let me know it it’s still a problem 

73’s Kev

ZF2CA BERU traveller tidbits

From: Colin Smithers
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2022 20:08:57 GMT

In Bob G3PJT’s excellent history of the contest ‘Reflections in a Rosebowl’, VE3EJ’s tips include topping up on sleep. Not so easy for the traveller. After three or four days of planes, cars, meetings, covid tests, border admin and station prep with added jetlag, the sheer excitement of ‘BERU in the morning!’ means not getting a solid rest that night either. Hours in, and once the adrenalin levels fall off the drowsiness eventually descends and my ability to differentiate between CC and XX disappears. Fortunately the sender slowed right down, helping me back to consciousness – this Caribbean station did claim those bonus points. Those who know me know I can powernap just anywhere, as others of you may have witnessed mid-QSO.

Following someone from band to band is the big fun in BERU. And of course it’s so useful to be able to predict the serial. So when operating SO2R with networked PCs and for the first time the number server issues a number that is out of sequence and back three – what to do? The other end repeats the sent number back with ‘?’, several times. Fortunately VK2GR’s morse was up to reading ‘Nr ok, nr ok, it’s the logger, it’s the logger’.  In the heat of battle fighting the loggers seemed the bigger challenge.

Being let out to roam after Covid the world has changed. It’s now clear to me that hotels everywhere are ‘open’, except that that means: Open apart from the bar and restaurant that shuts early with new (limited) menus, and maybe just shut some days. Oh, and we do not service rooms any more, although on day three you can have a fresh towel and shampoo. And we only allow one staff member on reception at any one time; It’s a Covid thing you know! And don’t mind rust in the plumbing – it soon clears (unlike the water in the shower tray). But as previously stated, they all charge fully. Everywhere is now under new management and with new front of house staff with a consequent loss of corporate memory and new names for bars and rooms. People that knew you and cross-arrangements with other organisations are long forgotten. But being in business, you feel for those who must have lost their shirts.

Fashions have altered too. In bars and restaurants water and soft drinks are now served out of large jam jars with thick, coarse threads – honest!

Renting a car in the Caribbean is always a dice roll. Mostly you pay a lot for a rust bucket with dubious and unbalanced shock absorption, and even more for the insurances (not needing to get into local bother at any cost). You can buy renters insurance – there is a Lloyds policy I believe and which is far cheaper – but the rental companies won’t accept it. For the very first time I had a new model, only 20,000 km on the odo and the kindly manager gave me some sound local advice: “Good, you have all the insurances, but remember not to park under coconut trees – they regard that as negligence.” Just as toast always lands butter side down, it seems coconuts always aim themselves at the windscreen. The true hazard for the uninitiated is, therefore, that the last empty parking spot is always the one under the coconut tree.

73, Colin Zf2CA, G4CWH, M3E

BERU 2022 – G3PJT

9am Saturday morning, just a quick walk down to the antennas to see if all looks OK. That’s odd I could have sworn I parked the Yagi on NE for VK/ZL but its pointing SE, strange. Quick look at the indicator in the shack and yes it says NE! So what’s going on? I found I could turn the beam but the direction was somewhat random in fact when the contest finished the beam was 180 deg out. This made for a challenging contest, lots of rushing back and forth to check the actual yagi direction for the entire contest as the error kept changing.

Nonetheless I thought conditions were quite reasonable and managed to break a few pile ups when the required direction and the beams actual direction were roughly the same. And there were certainly plenty of VK/ZL stations to work but probably fewer VEs than normal.

10m Usual spotty conditions 5X,5Z,9J, ZS around 1030-1300 and then ZF in the afternoon. No VE heard.

15m Outstanding signals from ZL6HQ on 15m SP . Jackie sounded as loud as a local as did VK6T and a nice bonus was ZD7.

20m Plenty of activity but for me no VE7, mystifying.

40m My receiving is limited by noise especially to the NW. and the noise nulling set up is much less effective on 40 than I had hoped. I might change to a rotary dipole this summer as the verticals are picking up too much local noise

80m So transmit on 80m and bang the SWR hits 4:1 the amp says ‘no way jose’ and shuts down. Flash over in ATU. It goes without saying that this did not occur in testing. On 80m though I have at last made some progress on noise reduction. Better engineering for next year. I think I will try shunt feeding the tower next.

On 80 too I should have stayed up later on Saturday but staying awake when the bands go quiet is practically impossible for me these days.

DXLog worked fine and the new version of the software has cured the slow band change problem I experienced in February. I like the SO2V implementation especially.

Looking back at the whole contest I was a bit dispirited with the rotator problem which looks like a complete antenna dismantling to get the rotator out for a new potentiometer(?) to be fitted. Its certainly true that a contest quickly finds the weaknesses in your set up.

See you next year.

BAND QSO BONUS HQ DUP POINTS AVG

———————————

80 18 10 5 0 90 5.0

40 43 33 5 0 215 5.0

20 75 46 8 0 370 4.9

15 41 34 4 0 205 5.0

10 6 5 1 0 30 5.0

———————————

TOTAL 183 128 23 0 910 5.0

=================================

FINAL SCORE: 3 930

BERU 2022 – GB5CC

From: Chris GM3WOJ
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2022 09:37:41 GMT

Hello all

Interesting to read all the reports about BERU last weekend.  It is always enjoyable being an HQ station, so I volunteered to be GB5CC again this year. This callsign has been in use since 1987 (the 50th anniversary of BERU) – I asked OFCOM if I could use the callsign GB85CC this year, but I only thought of this about a week before the event so they said ‘no’.

Out of the 625 QSOs I made, only about 5 stations accused me of being G6HCC. I’m not sure why this happens – one Caribbean station refused to accept that I was sending GB5CC even when I slowed down to 12wpm and sent the callsign with a 2 second gap between the letters 😦   Maybe it’s a code-reader problem – anyway they will lose the points despite my best efforts.

Overall the contest went reasonably well, but as others have mentioned, the edge was slightly taken off things for me by events in Ukraine in the background. A healthy turn-out from VK*WIA stations, but a disappointing number of VE*RAC stations this year. Jacky ZL3CW at ZL6HQ was a loud signal here on 40/20/15m.

The aim of a Bonus station in BERU is to be as available as possible for entrants to work. I did this by having a reasonably strong signal, ceaseless CQing (with some S&P) and having the 2021 winning UK Unassisted entrant’s logfile (thanks Keith GM4YXI / GM5X) to help my somewhat haphazard knowledge of what propagation to expect.

BAND   QSO DUP DXC  HQ  POINTS BONUS   AVG
——————————————–
   80   121   0  14   4     140   460  4.96
   40   178   4  25   7     330  1020  7.58
   20   215   6  33  11     540  1420  9.12
   15    76   0  21   1     150   600  9.87
   10    25   0   6   1      35   140  7.00
——————————————–
TOTAL   615  10  99  24    1195  3640  7.86
============================================
            TOTAL SCORE : 4 835

WinTest does not have a clue about scoring BERU as an HQ station, so the total score above is incorrect.

FTdx101D + K3 + amps.  80m vertical + dipole + 1 Beverage, 40m Force12 2ele yagi, 20/15m Force12 9ele yagi, 10m 5ele YO6.55 yagi.

Many stations worked GB5CC on four bands – the following stations are in the GB5CC log on all five bands :   G4CZB, G3BJ, G4BUO, G3PJT, G3TBK, G4PVM, GM3YTS, M7T, M5DX, G4KNO, G4FNL, G4PIQ, 5Z4VJ, MM0ZBH, GM0GAV, GM4Z.

Thanks to everyone for who worked GB5CC 2022.

73      Chris     GM3WOJ

To the BERU VK HQ Operators

On behalf of the WIA and the VK Team operators, ( and the rest of us – ‘PJT )thank you for your efforts in the contest last weekend. 

Here is a summary list of your contacts over the weekend:

VK1WIA   115

VK2WIA     97

VK3WIA   138

VK4WIA     83

VK5WIA     84

VK6WIA   133

VK7WIA     70

Total        720

With a quick review of the logs, I see that you all took the opportunity to work many of the UK and Canadian stations, and some of the World Traveler Team members.

With average DX conditions, high low band noise levels, simple wire antennas, low power and limited time, you all did a great job. Your efforts would have been appreciated by all who contacted you during the contest.

73,
Allan Mason, VK2GR

G4FNL – Commonwealth Contest

From: G4FNL
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2022 16:16:14 GMT

It has been interesting to read and compare notes with others for this years contest. I only submitted a check log last year because of Covid-19 restrictions. In previous years I have operated as an HQ station. This year, I was just a plain G station. I thought it might be much tougher – and it was.

I was in the High Power Assisted section, using a single Elecraft K3, Alpha 89 amp and a triband Yagi at around 50ft and dipoles + verticals on LF. I heard the usual suspects from G land – and my serial number was close – but Nick G4FAL , operating as M5DX did really well. I take my hat off to him – because he seemed to be everywhere that I was – but he was in the unassisted section and with a much higher serial number. I am grateful that he chose his short call. I think he did that partly altruistically – and I am very grateful.

Conditions seemed OK – and certainly a bit better on the Sunday morning on 10 and 15m. The K index was at 2 at the start – but the solar flux did peak to around 126 over the weekend. So, not ideal – but it could have been much worse. The period between 02:00z and 05:00 was truly awful  – no one to work and feeling  very tired. The only consolation is knowing that it’s the same for everyone else.  It was great to work the travellers – I’m so grateful that you guys made that huge effort.

I made 5 band QSOs with 5B4WN, 5Z4VJ, C56DF, GB5CC and VK6T. Terrific signals from Kevin who was S7 on my meter on 10m. Most others QSOs on that band were at much lower levels. Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to work all the UK HQ stations on all bands which was disappointing.

It was tricky on 80m. The ‘Air Horn’ QRM was a thorough nuisance – not sure I received Andy 5Z4VJ’s number correctly. He was right underneath the signal. Unfortunately, we also had a G station that obviously wasn’t hearing and kept transmitting over the top of him which made things a bit tricky too.  Separately, there was a VE station who was calling CQ – and getting lots of callers from G stations  – but he didn’t hear them. Obviously, he must have had high receive noise levels.

I’ll be trying to improve things for next year.  I plan to be operating as SO2R and hopefully with some improved vertical antennas. Here’s my claimed score breakdown, according to N1MM.

Thanks to everyone for the QSOs….

73 Graham G4FNL

NADARS G6XX Commonwealth Contest

From: Paul G3WYW Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2022 14:39:56 GMT Hi All,I have always enjoyed this contest and have taken part for a number of years from my modest home station. I saw Stew GW0ETF’s email in December last year looking for volunteers to run a HQ station in the upcoming (2022) Commonwealth Contest and after a quick discussion with some key members of my local radio club; Newbury and District Amateur Radio Society (NADARS); offered our new GB4GCT club station at Greenham Control Tower on the old USAF base in West Berkshire as a HQ station. After a couple of emails between us I was pleased to be offered the use of the G6XX call as a HQ station for the contest, after Graham G4FNL stood aside for us. Thanks Graham.   Greenham Control Tower is owned by the local Council and run as a Charity by a Trust with a museum and café open to the public from 10:00 till 16:00 on 5 days a week including weekends, so we had to negotiate with the Trust to allow us to remain on the premises and operate overnight and we have to thank our ex-Chairman Jeremy G4DOQ for getting us permission to do that.  We had set up the Station just before Covid broke out and the pandemic has prevented us from using the station until now.  The Commonwealth Contest gave us an opportunity to work some rare DX, test the station setup in a contest environment and learn any lessons for future operations from there.  Our original plan was to use the Clubs FLEX 6500 with my SPE 1K-FA Linear and our doublet strung out in an inverted V format within the confines of the Control Tower perimeter, however as the Linear wasn’t happy tuning the antenna on 40 metres and triggered the building alarms at 200W on most bands, that plan was abandoned on the Friday before the contest and we settled for the FLEX 6500 at 100W and the doublet tuned by the clubs MFJ auto tuner. We used N1MM+ and Flex Software running on the same PC but with separate Screens.  We had a team of 7 operators (M0TDW, G3WYW, G3RVM, G4DOQ, G0KPE, G4LMW, G3ZGC)  who operated the station on shifts throughout the 24 hours with two other members (JC 2E0JJC and Mark M0CUK our current chairman) who helped with logistics and security. Our first QSO with ZL3AT on 20M at the start boded well for us and we were suitably pleased! However that didn’t last as the bands seemed very quiet and we were not being heard. Checking the RBN showed us being received in DX locations but the dB levels were very low indicating we were there but not very strong. This meant breaking the pileups was difficult and keeping a run going a struggle. The first Canadian station worked was CJ3A around 90 minutes into the contest and our only Indian station VU2REC around  2 hours later. Our strategy was to run as much as possible as we hoped to be in demand, especially on the Sunday Morning with inter Gs on 80 and 40, but as conditions didn’t suit that we did quite a bit of S&P as well. We followed Don G3XTTs excellent article from PW a couple of years ago on Propagation for the Commonwealth Contest as much as we could. DX worked included 9Z4 Trinidad and Tobago, V31 Belize, ZF2 Cayman Islands, C56 Gambia, 9J Zambia, 5X1 Uganda, 5Z4 Kenya, VK Australia, ZL New Zealand and VU India.  Missed ones were 6Y5 Jamaica and ZS1 South Africa.  Overnight was very quiet with 80M not producing the QSOs runs that we had hoped for but by dawn, Richard G3ZGC was boosting the QSO count running on 80 and 40 picking up any DX that could hear us and the G’s that were up and about. We finished the last hour of the contest looking for anyone to work! Overall the contest was great success for us. Our location is ideal, high with a clear take-off in all directions, quiet with no local noise levels nearby. The Radio, PC and N1MM+ behaved themselves apart from one lockup on the Flex and once Rob G4LMW had sorted the N1MM+ Spot filtering and showing Multipliers we were away. Plans are already in place for next  year with a linear and beam, although careful planning will be needed as GCT is a Grade II listed building.  Thanks again to the  RSGB Contest Club for letting us use the G6XX HQ call. Unaudited results are as follow:  73 Paul G3WYW

1b.

9H6YI

Hi all

The plan was to operate from a high site on Gozo NFD style with homebrew antennas,in our Campervan, inspired by Peter G3LET’s visits. We travelled via Folkestone to Zurich, then down to Genoa , where the ferry inspector at first denied us access, passing through the red tape by skin of teeth; after taking the PCR test in Guildford we had 48 hours to get the boat in Genoa ! Thankfully then the overnight ferry, to Palermo in Sicily. We drove accross Sicily past Mt Etna, then took the 2 hour ferry to Valletta Malta then the last ferry to Gozo , all with the camper Van full of the station poles antennas and generator. ! So with the xyl driving too we finally met Colin 9H4CT in Gozo who had booked our site. This site was 300 feet asl with sea views and a pond nearby…hopeful! Then setup on Friday was good in sunny weather with dipoles for 40-10 and verticals for 80 40m 20 ,10 and an elevated GP for 15M., connexcting to an FTDX10 recently acquired. the contest started well, good runs to G and VE on 15m 20m and some Dx on 10m… till wx went bad at sat evening. This high spot had rain , wind, and I was in the camper awning! with the awning flapping , rain coming in , then the dipole mast came down in pieces at 3 am.

Carrying on after a break to eat, warm up, fix the awning and move the rig away from the drips, the xyl fed me cheese butties and I kept on with the verticals . 80m was OK on a vertical, and the other bands kept going. On 10m there were short openings to ZD7,5B4, VK and G, 15m to G, VK, ZL, as its a great site and I made 570 QSO s and 5000 PTS ish.

80m 34 Q

40m 147 Q

20m 202 Q

15m 171 Q

10m 6 Q

560 Q , 111 Bonus 5280 pts

I was not a big signal so there were lots of repeats thanks to all who put up with my sigs.

Thanks to Colin 9H4CT and his xyl, for greetings and coffee and getting the site permission, Peter G3LET for advice.

now on home after great trip round Sicily, Italy ,France, Swiss. Mike G3VYI