1. I like this contest a lot. It does not matter to me that my reasons are selfish and of “make me feel better” kind – we all deserve a little boost now and then. I consider myself not even a “small pistol” amongst “big guns” but rather a “pellet gun” or a “BB gun”. The format audience and scoring system of the BERU contest all work very well to rub my fragile ego the right way. “Linear” rather than “exponential” scoring does not leave the weaklings with a typical for other contests minuscule fraction of the winner’s result. Feeling more like one is “in the game” works for me.

2. 12 hours vs 24 hours. It has been many attempts now and I have yet to put in a “full-time” effort. One reason is that I am officially a senior now. The other is my setup resulting in what I can hear drying up rather quickly with subsequent long periods of “nothing to work” drudgery. The scoring format helps in that decision too: there is always a chance that you stumble upon a juicy bonus pointer in the midst of a desert (or in the emptiness of an ice floe). So 24 hours it is even though this year I put in just over 17 and again found myself asleep in the chair towards the end.

3. Conditions I think were significantly down from the last year. One of the CCO members has rightly asked “OK who gave the 10m band the day off???” Also 80m was extremely noisy here likely some exchanges logged will turn out not to be correct. So be it you can’t be asking for repeats forever.

4. Well there is always “next year”. And I am looking forward to it!

VE3BR