Back in December 2008 I decided that I would like to be a traveller in the 2009 BERU or alternatively known as the Commonwealth contest. This would be the 72nd contest and I had never entered before not even from the UK. I spoke with Nick G4FAL (V47CD) who pointed me towards Dave G3TBK (J88DR) who suggested one or two islands in the Caribbean that would be worth considering. Despite Sharon having a licence this needed to be a holiday where other activities would be available to us other than just radio! The hunt was on to find an island that would suit both radio and other activities such as sunbathing, swimming in the sea or pool or both, shopping, sightseeing, eating, drinking and dancing etc., for me I needed somewhere with a good take off to the North (VE and G with a good path to VK/ZL too), a few beers and some food would also be needed at some point! This was no easy task! The Grenadian by Rex Resorts on the island of Grenada seemed to fit all of our requirements and with a little further assistance from Dave I contacted the local authorities for a J3 licence and the flights and hotel were booked.

The local authorities were most helpful. My point of contact was Sean Francis of the National Telecommunications Regulatory Commission who arranged a licence for Sharon and me. Sharon was given an equivalent M3 licence suffixed by /J3 and I was given the magical call of J38CW!

In the first week of January I was asked along to a Team meeting for the “Rest of the world team” at the UK country residence of Dave G3TBK near Grantham where I met other members of the Team, Bob 9H3JT, John G3LZQ (J79WR) and Nick (G4FAL) whom I have known for a few years. After a few cups of tea, discussions around how things had gone in 2008 and how it could be improved on for 2009 a strategy was put in place and the team was set to go! Dave was our Team Captain and did a fantastic job, as did the rest of the team in making sure I had thought of everything that would be needed to be successful in my first attempt at the BERU.

So here we were in January and getting very excited about our forthcoming DXpedition in March, I needed to start thinking about rigs and antenna’s. What should I take with us to ensure we stay on air if for nothing else but the BERU! I decided on Dipoles for 80m and 40m with one feed point, and the YP3 beam in a bag from “Super Antenna’s”, if you have never seen one it all folds down into a bag that is only 3 foot long and weighs only 12lb all in. This beam would allow me a little gain on 20, 15 and should I see any flying pigs - a 10 metre opening! The YP3 would also give me a 3 element beam on 17, 12 and 6 meters if I felt the need after the contest. The only problem being was finding a mast either one to take with me or one on the island that I could use from the chosen QTH. Thoughts of getting through customs with a folding 30ft mast didn’t bear thinking about so I went for the “lets find one when we get there” option which turned out to be right thing to do in the end. The rig of choice was the Yaesu FT857d, a Watson 25F PSU, and the SPE Expert 1K-FA solid sate amplifier with built in ATU to take me up to my flight weight allowance! You cant take enough coax I am always told and having done a few portable events in my time I agree with so this was to be no exception, thanks to Terry of Diode Communications in Barnsley I had no shortage of some nice low loss Aircell 7. I did take the “Just in case” kit which included my antenna analyser, wire cutters, thin nosed pliers, a multi optional screw driver, PVC tape, cable clips (lots of) a knife (ex Boys brigade!) and some string, (same rule applies as coax – take loads of string!). Of course I needed my laptop for the contest, I used “Wintest” for logging which performed extremely well, and I also used this for logging all QSO’s during my stay. For CW I took my mini paddle by Palm radio which is an excellent little key for portable working and very light weight too. A Heil HC4 headset went in the bag for SSB.

Carrying this little lot was not going to be an issue as we were flying with Virgin and they have an extremely generous allowance which meant we could even take a few clothes with us too! March the 12^th arrived and off we headed to Gatwick at 3am for our 8.45 direct flight to Grenada, my first concern was finding out that it was not a direct flight but was via Tobago, okay I’m thinking I have packed my back up ex army all band dipole in the suitcase so if all else fails I will have an antenna to work with, the rig, PSU and laptop were all going as hand luggage anyway so not all would be lost if things went missing on route! Fingers crossed all would go well and I’m pleased to report it did, Virgin took away the amp (it had its own suitcase!) and the 3ft bag containing all my antenna’s, except my ex army one as “Fragile” luggage which was great!

For the first time in my travelling with a rig there were no questions asked as I put my bags through the usual security systems and I was not even asked to remove the laptop! It is a 9 hour flight to Grenada from Gatwick and we slept most of the way in between movies, being fed, duty free sales and any other reasons they could think of to keep us awake! Not a real problem for us though, we had not slept as we had driven down over night from Sheffield so we were ready for some shut eye almost immediately we left the ground! Landing in Tobago, I was glued to the window watching every bag being removed from the hold of our Boeing 747-4Q8 (call sign G-VTOP – named “Virginia Plain”) the good news was there was no sign of any or luggage being off loaded! We then spent an hour on the ground while the crew searched for 15 missing passengers that should still be on the aircraft! This turned out to be a miscount which they claimed was due to people going to the toilets and generally not standing or sitting still to be counted! We arrived in Grenada five minutes late but it was 3.20pm local time (7.20pm GMT) and the temperature was 28C and Sunny. To my amazement everything arrived intact and after collecting it all, we proceed to the hotel.

We could have walked from the airport as it was less than a half a mile to our hotel. The Grenadian Rex Resort gave us all a very warm welcome. The hotel reception team allocated us an excellent room on the top floor and just 20 metres from the sea. Next day things just got better, the General Manager of our hotel Ken Flockhart who met us on arrival gave me access to the roof above our room and one of his excellent maintenance team to assist me with getting my antenna’s in the air. Our room was 3 floors up directly below the flat roof, my kind assistant found a 20ft pole which he attached with some rope to the balcony railings outside the room. Excited by this latest addition to the antenna system I headed to the roof with Les – a Canadian chap I had been speaking with in reception earlier, Les had never heard of our hobby and probably wishes he never did! Les took a great interest in our activity and being an engineer back home in Vancouver stated that putting the beam together would be a doddle for him! As it turned out, it did! It was as it said it would on the box and took us about 20 minutes to construct the finished article ready for use on 20m, one problem and the one thing I hadn’t thought of, the U bolts on the clamp would not fit the mast!

Having got an engineer on hand was a big help at this point, Les managed to work out the stresses involved in supporting the YP3 on the mast after Sharon popped up with some light refreshment for us from the bar on the beach and while I got the 40m and 80m dipoles ready to add to the mast Les worked out a method of attaching the beam to the mast.

The solution was simple........... cable clips, lots of them, an absolute brilliant idea and the result of having a trained engineer on the team! It took a dozen or so large cable clips to attach the beam to the mast and a little muscle to pull them tight but it worked! On went the dipoles just below the beam so that they were supported in the centre and then spread out across the roof, the feeders dropped off nicely onto the balcony and fed into the room via a slatted window which could be closed to trap the cables securely but not tight enough to damage them, we could not have asked for better. Being located on the very south point of the island the take off was to the North straight up the West coast of the island, ideal for VE and USA, G working and EU would mean turning the beam to the east across the island but cleared the mountains in the North of the island so we were in business. I checked all the antennas with the analyser once back in the room and all were okay and within the limits of where I wanted them for CW. The low SWR showing on all the antennas meant the auto ATU in the Expert would have no problem in tuning any of them in fact, if it was possible I would have switched the ATU out as the SWR was 1.2:1 on the dipoles and 1.3:1 on the beam! Mean while Sharon had recruited a further addition to the team who had volunteered to climb up the palm tree on the beach just opposite our room for the back up 20m dipole should anything happen to the beam during the contest.

It was now Friday afternoon and J38CW was ready to go on air, the first call of CQ on 20m on CW would be the only call for about 2 hours, the pile up was never ending but great fun! The FT857d (with CW filter) was not a match for the FT2000 sat idle at home and some times it was hard to pull out complete call signs first time, I got better at it as did the callers in the pile up who learned my listening habits! I tried to keep it tight which didn’t help my limited selectivity! SSB operation was easier but with no fewer callers! Reports in and out were excellent and mostly exceeded S9 both ways on all bands.

The BERU started at 0600 local time Saturday morning so it was going to be an early night with an early morning (getting up at 5.30am was helped by the fact our body clocks which were still working in GMT!). 0600 Saturday and we were off - 40metres was buzzing with VE’s and G stations finding a clear frequency to call CQ was going to be tricky and I could hear some of the team already with pile ups and then I found one, QRL? Nothing heard -CQ CQ CQ de J38CW test k and then the pile up started.........it was amazing and was going to be hard work but great fun!

Its now getting on for lunch time and conditions on 20m seems to favour USA and VE, despite everything and being told time and time again, US stations call and call making it harder to hear the weaker G stations and other DX somewhere in the pile ups. To make matters worse the air conditioning starts to make some strange noises and the room starts meeting the temperature of 30 degrees outside very quickly. Then over the next twelve hours came the mosquito bites about 31 in total mostly round my feet and ankles. Just when you think things could not get much worse 40m seemed to drop out, not really much of a surprise time was getting on and I really should be on 80m, trouble was there was very little I could hear on 80m, high noise levels and weak signals are not a good combination when it comes to trying to make QSO’s! 80m was hopeless although I managed a few contacts before it died completely and I QSY’d back to 40m to hear Nigel bashing away working one after another so I gave it another go but nothing doing I was not being heard and to be honest I could hear very little anyway. Things did start to pick up again in the last hour or so as we got near dawn but of course by then it was too late as it was all over and done with at 0600 Sunday morning and I was in bed and asleep dreaming of CW QSO’s by about 0602! Its strange how CW can carry on in your head hours after you stop operating, maybe not everyone suffers with this perhaps its just me! Normal holiday hours and activities begin on day 4 and everyone I meet in the hotel wants to know how it’s gone, who told them I keep asking myself I only told two people now the whole hotel seems to know what I have been doing in my room for the past 24 hours! It’s all good I remember thinking to myself, anything that heightens awareness of our hobby has to be good!

Operating became less intense now for the remainder of the holiday with us having the odd hour in the early evening and a couple of hours before bed on air most days, we worked around 1500 QSO’s during our stay which was not as many as we would have liked but treat em mean keep em keen is our motto so we will return next year to work some more!

Returning home was fun, the security at the airport in Grenada wanted to know what everything was and I had to empty all the equipment in my hand luggage and they also took me behind the scenes to open up the suite case containing the linear amp and explain to the them what it was unfortunately it was then damaged somewhere between Grenada and Gatwick Airport, thank goodness for ARIS!

QSL cards are now available for anyone who worked us but if you missed us we will be back next year. 73 Colin J38CW.