Steve G3UFY, my xyl and myself travelled to the Pafos forest location of Norman 5B4AIE at 900m asl this year to run C4I as a multi-op station.
With a 3 ele SteppIR and verticals all looked good.
However the Cyprus weather turned very nasty with big thunderstorms before and during the whole contest..S9+ static and high winds at the start. Apologies to those who were asked for many repeats but the static was bad.
Sunday morning saw another storm and lightning and we closed down for a while. The station runs on solar batteries, big ones, and a top up generator. Unfortunately that generator wouldn’t go and we spent a while fixing it on saturday evening, jumping the solar inverters with cables and finding a pesky fuse with only one metal end.We had to run low power in the night as a result,
then a huge storm swept the mountain depositing 2 inches of hail , lightning, and knocking down the 80m vertical in 3 pieces! This is all good expedition training and makes the end result and pub lunch well worth it.
Conditions were poor, 1 qso on 10m, no Caribean, VE’s in the noise in the static, but great to hear the BERU regulars and travelers.The total of 600+ QSOs was slightly disappointing but good considering the band conditions and challenges.
Thanks to Norman for all his help and great to meet the local 5B4’s before for a meal.Where to next year? 73 Mike G3VYI
Commonwealth Contest 