Hello UK Contesters,
This was the third year running that I’ve operated BERU from Mauritius. It’s a great place to operate from. However, thanks to ever declining HF conditions, my QSO total has decreased each year!
The last twelve hours of BERU this year were a real slog, with appalling propagation. Even with the help of Assisted, unworked stations were very hard to find.
Apologies for my weak signal on 80m. This year I did not have an 80m antenna. For the 20 QSOs I made on 80m, I was force-feeding my 40m vertical. Congratulations to those who copied my serial number correctly first time on 80m. No mean feat with my poor 80m TX antenna!
40m and 20m were the bread-and-butter bands. But as Don G3XTT at C56DF has already commented, the short duration QSB was unbelievably fast. A station would call with a reasonable signal, then almost immediately the signal would dive to zero. Multiple repeats were needed to get the serial numbers through. One or two VE stations were sending too fast and seemed insensitive to the difficult QSB-laden conditions.
There were two short openings to the UK that I caught on 15m. The second was a nice surprise in the very last hour of the contest.
Nothing was worked on 10m. I did try a QSY with my ‘local’ Brian 9J2BO, but even that did not work.
Please put your claimed BERU scores and comments on 3830. That way we can all see them in a wider context.
3B8XF made 492 net QSOs for 5,555 points : 2,455 QSO pts and 3,100 Bonus pts.
Nigel G3TXF
Commonwealth Contest 