This was a last minute change of plan as I had thought I would be operating from home this year. But we decided to take a quick break in Gozo.
Location. We rented the Bellavista appartment from Joe 9H5JO who I found through the DX Holiday website .This is on the north shore of Gozo. The apartment has been used by the BCC gang for CQ WW CW and seemed to be as good a choice as any for a short break operation and has an excellent take off to the North and from East to West. Joe will arrange a licence (9H is NOT CEPT) , transfers from the airport and will even buy a few supplies in case the shops are not open! All in all, a great service. Contact Joe at joe9h5jo@yahoo.com and visit the website.
Set Up. I took the K2/100, PSU, ATU and a SOTA 10m pole. The latter travelled in a telescopic tube (a Jakar Giant Teletube) designed to carry drawings and this survived the airport baggage handlers without difficulty. I took 30m of Mini8 in two lengths of 20 and 10m. For antennas Joe kindly put up an 80m inv L on the roof - probably about 80 feet over the ground. I taped wires for 40/15, 20, and 10 to the fishing pole and ran that against 3 radials salvaged from the Butternut. A bit of pruning with the MFJ got a reasonable match. (Rule 1 never go without an MFJ!) Both the antennas were mounted on the roof which was a flat area about 10m wide by 20m deep with a central staircase head. Unfortunately I couldn't put the vertical on top of this because it was too windy. Joe guyed the vertical with 4 guys because of the wind and I also added two more later in the week. These poles seem to be very strong and flexible but a bit of guying makes the base stronger.
I had intended to use WIN-TEST for this trip but after I had had two unexplained self reboots during the pre contest testing I decided to go back to Writelog which despite everything doesn't crash and keys without speed changes etc .
Conditions were very mixed with little stable progation on 15 or 10m, but 20 and 40 seemed OK I got the impression that the location was very quiet ( except when there were storms) and that I could hear better than I was being heard and this pattern continued throughout the weekend.
The first hour of the contest was amazing with a huge pile up on 20 but after about 40 minutes it went very quiet, just as if the propagation had been switched off. 15 m was very frustrating with poor conditions to G despite hearing 9J and 7Q at very good strength. the only Q on 10 was with 9J2BO but I heard 7Q7BP but could not raise him. This patchy conditions had some strange effects like working VP8NO on an otherwise dead band and hearing him repeatedly calling CQ with no takers, very odd. And VQ9 calling me on 40! I really didn't have a strong enough signal on 80 to overcome the higher noise levels elsewhere - its very frustrating to have people CQing in your face and realise the bonuses are slipping away.
Open Section
80 40 20 15 10 Q/B Points
71/10 204/39 285/43 19/16 1/1 580/109 5080
Weather. Two major storms ( a feature of our other BERU trips ) The first one took place before the contest and severely tested the antennas. This produced huge waves along the foreshore with spray, coating the hire car in salt and shooting 40 ft into the air and over the road along the village promenade. In fact it was too windy to do much antenna work or indeed even walk to the nearest restaurant and bar, but we forced ourselves. The second storm took place at sunset on saturday and I had to close down. the static level went very high ( and thanks to Ian GM3SEK for persisting with his exchange)and after the second lightning flash I disconnected the antennas for an hour until things quietened down and to have a plate of pasta. It was very cold and I seem to get very cold when I sit still contesting so the heat sink on the K2 doubled as a hand warmer!
Gozo . A very interesting place to visit and the restaurant quality is easily the best I have experienced for many years. It turned out to be a gourmet trip par excellence! We tried the following:-
Ta Salvina, Gharb tasalvina@vol.net.mt and website Down the street to the right of the church in the picture above. La Trattoria Marsalforn Chez Armand, Marsalforn website Pulena Marsalforn Oleader, Xaghra - great lunch It-Tmun, Xlendi quiet and another excellent lunch place. The bar in the corner of Independence Square in Victoria. And others which I can't seem to recall .