Hi Bob
A belated report from M5O (G3LET) after the return trip from Suffolk, where I was very kindly hosted by Andy M0NKR at his excellent station in Brandon. I also spent much of yesterday fixing my sister-in-law’s bath/shower, which had commenced leaking buckets of water through her living room ceiling (I had stayed with her on the Friday and Sunday nights).
My own BigIR and 66 ft vertical are still languishing in the long grass of the paddock following Storm Eunice, remaining unrepaired due to some sailing commitments and other issues over the past 18 months.
Anyway, I managed to last the full 24 hours, albeit with rapidly diminishing concentration levels after midnight. Hence, I will have significantly missed out on the usual morning LP openings.
Nevertheless, it was good to participate from the UK as opposed to various overseas sorties in recent years.
So this was by no means a competitive entry, with no attempts to move anybody, largely because the valve PA at Andy’s station requires several seconds of high power tuning, which is both time consuming and somewhat anti-social.
Most of my time was spent tuning, CQs producing mainly VE3s on the occasions they were tried (mainly when fatigue was setting in)
I ended up with 284 QSOs plus 3 dupes and a claimed score of 5440, pretty mediocre. One highlight was hearing Gerry G3KMQ batting away. Gerry did sterling service for several months copying my weekly log for QSL purposes in the early 1960’s during my VP8 operation. He must be or at least approaching his 90’s by now.
Less welcome were the minimum of 4 other contests that now share the BERU weekend, however one of these did attract some Commonwealth stations who weren’t interested in BERU but made themselves available, albeit without the correct exchange.
Quite how long BERU can continue in it’s present form I am uncertain, with activity now largely limited to the “old” Commonwealth, the rather artificial HQ stations and a diminishing band of ex-pat travellers. I have previously suggested the possibility of combining with the REF event, which shares many features with BERU, but whether historic rivalries could be overcome remains to be seen. We have been comparatively lucky with propagation the last couple of years; let’s see whether this event can survive the next sunspot minimum.
Cheers and thanks to all for the QSOs!
Peter G3LET (M5O)