VK1WIA

From: Andrew VK1DA Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2023 21:56:05 GMT Hi all,Thanks for the invitation to operate as vk1wia, it was a pleasure and I believe I worked all other VK HQ stations at least once, which was neat. From my perspective the portable operation was great fun, I am definitely a field day junkie and this was an opportunity not to be missed.I find those huge signals from UK and VE stations quite astonishing, and working some African prefixes as well is a real treat for someone who rarely even hears any African country during the rest of the year.  I can still recall marvelling at hearing GB5CC at s9+20 on either 20 or 15, simply amazing. I had to overcome some station deficiencies which I will write about elsewhere, but eventually arrived at a combination that worked.  I used my Begali key, which I rarely take to a field location but it is simply a pleasure to use for higher speeds (20 is about my usual limit!) It’s also very nice to have the big guns in the vk teams knowing my name and including it in the contacts, that is appreciated by all HQ stations I’m sure.  Note to self: keep a list of names of the HQ ops handy for same purpose.   73 Andrew VK1DA/VK2DA

Thank you to Commonwealth Contest: VK HQ Stations

From: Allan Mason
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2023 20:58:38 GMT

To Lee, Peter, Grant, Keith and David,

This email is a thank you on behalf of  the 2023 Commonwealth Contest participants who managed a QSO with one or more of the VK HQ stations.

 Apart from VK3WIA,operated by Lee,  I know that you have very modest antenna systems and don’t normally compete against the QRO stations. Andrew operated VK1WIA as a portable station from battery and solar panel power on a hill in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT).

The VK HQ team racked up 807 QSOs that would not be in participant logs with out your time and efforts.  Below is the contact summary from your entered logs:

VK1WIA   97

VK2WIA 125

VK3WIA 125

VK4WIA   78

VK5WIA  225

VK6WIA  127

Total        807

I will be in contact again early in 2024 to see if you are available to operate a HQ station again or know someone in your call area that may be able to take over your operating role.

73,
Allan Mason, VK2GR

VA2RAC HQ

I was proud again this year to represent Quebec with the call VA2RAC HQ.  Not always easy for a small pistol but with the good propagation I was confident.  The openings on 10 and 15m were appreciated.The 20m was normal and my best band. Unfortunately the 40 and 80m were very noisy and it was difficult to make Europe but some nice surprises.GB5CC GM3WOJ and GW5WS had very strong signals.
What a pleasure it was to be called by VK6T VK2IG VK2PN VL6M VK6BO ZL3AB ZL3P. Obviously I was not looking for mults. and I was mostly in CQ/RUN mode.  Next year I will have better antennas for 80 and 40m and with the good propagation the results should be better.
Thanks to all.
73, Claude (DUB) VE2FK (VA2RAC HQ)

RSGBBERU Summary Sheet

Start Date : 2023-03-11

CallSign Used : VA2RAC

Operator(s) : VE2FK

Operator Category : SINGLE-OP

Assisted Category : ASSISTED

             Band : ALL

            Power : HIGH

             Mode : CW

        Club/Team : Contest Group du Quebec

         Software : N1MM Logger+ 1.0.9826.0

        Band     QSOs     Pts  Cty  Sec  Pt/Q

         3,5      37     500   15    1  13,5

           7      47     615   18    1  13,1

          14     178    1810   43    1  10,2

          21     102    1030   23    2  10,1

          28      42     610   18    1  14,5

       Total     406    4565  117    6  11,2

Score : 4 565

Summary of vk1wia

Summary of vk1wia contest From: Andrew VK1DA Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2023 03:49:06 GMT I operated again as a field station at the same place as last year, near Wee Jasper and about 40km WNW of Canberra.  It’s well elevated at 1179m ASL, grid subsquare is QF44IR.  Wx was hot in the day, cool at night, calm until late Sunday evening.  I dropped the antennas so I could sleep without worrying about a steel mast falling on my camper.  I had some problems with my intended radio and had to revert to the IC706 after an hour during which I only logged a handful of contacts. The 706 did much better.  When the lower bands seemed to be somewhat empty I took a look at 15m and found big signals from some of the UK stations, in particular GB5CC.  I also changed my antenna over to a linked dipole selected for 15m. For power I used a AGM battery which did ok, I boosted it during daylight hours with a 100w solar panel.  Eventually I logged 97 contacts and I hope my manual band changing in N1MM did not lose any. With only plain wire antennas or verticals you don’t have to worry about whether the signal path is LP or SP.  and the home brew vertical did very well, with s9 signals reported from some EA SOTA contacts I made in a lull in the contest around 0700 Sunday.  I actually had a run of 20 SOTA callers there, but the longest “run” in the contest was about 3.  Life is different on zero gain antennas and 100w.  But the HQ callsign probably gained a few responses that my own callsign might not have.  I tried to chase down all the VK ops I could find to make at least 1 contact and preferably more.  I think I got a few on 4 bands and several on 3 bands.  At one point I was hunting for one of the other VK HQ stations but only heard him working others.  My CQs were not always successful in gaining any contacts so I was generally better off in S&P mode. Thanks to Allan for inviting me to do this again, thanks all for the contacts.  73 Andrew VK1DA/VK2DA Op for vk1wia

Commonwealth Contest @ GW5WS

Stewart gw0etf 10:18am #19301   Steve GW0GEI once again came up from Ceredigion to join me running the GW HQ station. I’ve been trying to throw off a persistent cold/cough all winter so glad that Steve seemed pleased to have the opportunity to do lots of operating at the weekend. Snow wasn’t an issue except for probably helping to bring down the 80m dipole at the feedpoint overnight Thursday/Friday; fortunately Friday was calm and sunny and it was easy to get it back aloft.Having 10 and 15m wide open completely changed the feel of the contest for us. 80/40 were a bit disappointing especially around greyline but you can’t expect everything. These are some numbers:- BAND QSO  EU/UK(%) ———————————    80m       75    77    40m     122    63    20m     152    45    15m     159    50    10m     111    58 Total        619    56 The right hand column is what DXlog is telling us is our Europe percentage which must be more or less UK&CD from our HQ status. It was remarkably easy to work other Gs on both 10 and 15 even on back scatter.After 15 years with a K3 I’ve just bought a IC-7610 and after some hurried self tutoring and RTFM last week gave it a good run out in Beru. I don’t like using unfamiliar radios and hoped I’d covered all the basics. After the early phases of the contest when I’m conscious of our HQ/’service provider’ role I enjoyed playing with the facilities such as digging out marginal signals using the various tools like audio peaking filter and noise reduction. Late on I had a report of clicks from a G. I spent a few minutes checking obvious settings and turned off full break-in. We were on for the whole 24 hours so if anyone else noticed please drop me an email.Thanks for all the fun and to Steve and all the travellers too. Despite the drudgery overnight it was a great contest. 73, Stew GW0ETF

GB5CC at G4FNL

It’s great to see the reports from some of the stations active at the weekend. I was hopeful that the recent HF condx would extend into the weekend – and they did – in spades. Not quite so true on 80m and 40m. I took my eye off the clock – and consequently, I missed any grey line propagation and was two hours late on these bands on the Saturday eve. So, I apologise to the VK / ZL guys 😌

I normally find that in the early hours, when the rate slows right down that I struggle to stay awake. Not this year. In fact, 10m was open quite late and 20m was open long path to VK / ZL between 0200z and 0400z.

I agree with the comments about QRS – I had to ask a few to slow down – because of the aurora. I just hope that I found the right balance of speed and I tried to work as many people as I could.

QSO numbers on 80m and 40m were way down on previous years. At GB5CC you’d expect to work something like 150Qs on 80m and 200 on 40m – you can see the numbers that I worked this year on the summary below (The column labelled “Sec” shows the HQ stations worked) – but are similar to Don’s totals at G5WS. I’d be interested to know if everyone found the same?

Beforehand, I was considering SO2R – but reasoned that I’d probably be CQing most of the time – so I stuck with a single radio. I was using a single K3 with an Alpha 89 amplifier. Antennas were a Doublet on 80m and either a dipole or vertical on 40m and an ancient TB3 Yagi at 20m on the HF bands. I also had Beverage ants for RX. Here’s a couple of photos to give some idea of the set up (hopefully photos are allowed through)

I have tried to erect better TX antennas on the LF bands – but it’s just not that easy.

My thanks to everyone who worked me – and I know that there were some where we just couldn’t make it – but I just hope that I made GB5CC in BERU 2023 appear in as many logs as possible. GL to the operator of GB5CC next year – you’ll have fun.

73 Graham G4FNL

[graham@…]

_._,_._,_

Commonwealth Contest VK5WIA – HQ station

From: Grant Willis (VK5GR) Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2023 21:29:38 GMT Folks, For what it’s worth VK5WIA managed: Contest: Total     254    3335   93   10  13.1Score: 3,3351 Mult = 2.5 Q’s  I saw some big scores towards the end – 800-900s from some of the Canadians and ZF2CA. I also learned what the impact was of my lack of CW practice prior to the contest. I hope I didn’t break too many callsigns. It certainly hit my rate that I used to be able to achieve. I also found it really hard to get spotted on the cluster network. A lot of stations I think must run in the non-cluster section of the contest. To know when the band was open, I resorted to scanning the RBN for my own spots to know if I was at least making it through to the target areas. All up I managed to stay on air for 12:08 hours which included a fairly successful run across the morning greyline on 40m and a good run on 10m Sunday evening to G as well as Sunday morning into VE. I also had contact with quite a few of the Africans on 10 and 15m (9J, 5Z, 9G) but no ZS or VU? To the Caribbean I made 6Y and ZF. No 9M however for Asia but at least made 9V. There were almost no VK domestic ops other than the team stations, and sorry but I couldn’t find many of you during my on times. I only completed a 4-band sweep with about 4-5 of you. (no 80m here still, waiting on parts to rebuild and reconfigure the antenna). I had quite a few G and a couple VE stations that I also managed 4 band sweeps with. HQ stations seem a bit scarce as well. Other than VK and G where there were 4-5 each, there really didn’t seem to be any on. I think I found one in VE, none in ZL and that was it. Even the VKs weren’t common although I managed at least one QSO with each of them (except VK3 – sorry Lee missed you somehow).  Finally, a general word. There were some really grotty signals on the air too. If amateurs want to make a case for high power with the authorities, operators need to put more effort to understanding how to run their transmitters such that they don’t have massive sidebands, clicks and other artefacts on them. In a couple of cases, I suspected RX overload, only to lower my RF gain etc and still see the artefacts present, so I am fairly certain it was the transmitter end. Food for thought.  Regards,Grant VK5GR as VK5WIA for the 2023 BERU  P.S. Logs have been submitted to RSGB and copies sent to VK3GK as requested

BERU HQ station G5WS

Don Beattie, G3BJ 6:52pm

Here’s a short report on the contest from my perspective. I offered to run the England HQ station, using the call G5WS, so my results are not really comparable with those in the UK not able to work UK stations.

Firstly, from a personal perspective G5WS call could have been a better choice – in the early hours I found myself, when using the paddle, reverting to G5W and having to correct myself.  Also it brought back to me how important it is to have a call on CW which ends with a “hard” letter (a dash or two). I found the “s” getting misread too many times – I suspect G5WS will be busted in some logs. There seemed fewer problems with non-BERU countries trying to join the contest this year – perhaps word is spreading about what it’s all about.  

Conditions for me were mixed – generally good HF conditions combined with rather flat DX conditions on 80m and to an extent also on 40m. The auroral rasp was very prominent on many signals on Saturday evening. Also, the strong back-scatter on UK stations on HF meant that some were quite tricky to copy at speed. I hope however that UK stations were able to copy G5WS and get the band bonuses they wanted.

I think I’m quite a way behind Graham G4FNL running GB5CC, so well done to him – he seemed a big signal everywhere.

BERU is a great test of propagation knowledge and perseverance – I plan to be back as a “normal” entrant next year.

For what it’s worth, here are the numbers, and I’ve added an extra column so that the comparable QSO numbers can be seen when eliminating all UK QSOs.

Thanks to all for the fun.

Don, G3BJ

BAND   QSO Excl.UK DUP DXC  HQ  POINTS BONUS AVG

————————————————–

   80    97   43     1  16   2     215   560  7.99

   40   155   70     0  29   3     350   980  8.58

   20   187  120     4  31  11     550  1460 10.75

   15   167   89     3  29   7     445  1160  9.61

   10   140   71     0  29   5     355  1060 10.11

————————————————–

TOTAL   746   383    8 134  28    1915  5220  9.56

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

            TOTAL SCORE : 7 135

Don Beattie G3BJ / G5W

VE7RAC Canadian HQ station will be active

‘ll be operating as VE7RAC.
73 Brian, VE7JKZ

HQ stations and Teams (tnx Allan VK2GR)

HQ Stations for 2023:

GB5CC    G4FNL
G5WS     G3BJ
GD5WS   GD4XUM/G3NKC
GI5WS     GI4DOH
GM5WS   GM3WUX
GW5WS   GW0ETF/GW0GEI

VK1WIA   VK1DA  Andrew
VK2WIA   VK2WQ  David
VK3WIA   VK3GK  Lee
VK4WIA   VK4TT  Keith
VK5WIA   VK5GR  Grant
VK6WIA   VK6RZ  Peter

VA2RAC   VE2FK  Claude

World Traveler Team:
5B/G3VYI  Mike
5Z4VJ        G3AB   Andy

6Y5HN       Nigel

9G5XA       G3XAQ  Alan
ZF2CA       G4CWH  Colin

Australia 1 Team:
VK6T          VK6LW  Kevin
VK2GR       Allan
VK4SN       Alan
VK2BJ        Barry
VK6VZ        Steve

Australia 2 Team:
VK7BO        Alan
VJ3A           VK3JA  Steve
VL6M          VK6GX  Phil
VK2PN        Patrick
VK1A/4       VK2IA  Bernd

Grimsby Mariners Team:

G3TBK        Dave
G3SJJ         Chris
G4EBK        George
G3VIP         Graham
G4LPD        Richard

Quake Contesters Team:
ZL2RX          Roger
ZL3AB          Mark
ZL3GA          Geoff
ZL4RA          Chris
ZL3P            ZL3PAH Phil