[UK-CONTEST] IOTA - to run or not to run....

[Lee Volante]

Hi again,

A lot of folks have been talking about their rates achieved during the IOTA
contest.   Having seen scores come in on 3830, and sitting here with a
calculator pressing "times 3" and "divide by 15" a lot, I'm now beginning to
wonder if I should have done any running at all.

For single ops, unless you can run at a good rate, and / or have listening
capability whilst running, I've got a sneaking suspicion that even a
moderate proportion of running does not produce a good enough overall score.
IOTAs and mults by themselves will generate a good score - you do not need
high volume Q's also.  n.b. This does not apply to multi-ops who do need to
do both of course !

The World entrants know to get a good score you must S+P for perhaps 80 or
90% of the time.   I think that most single op Island entrants would
probably need to do the same too.   Try it:   Perhaps halve your QSO score,
and add just 25% more mults (and perhaps bumping up your pts/Q a little to
be realistic.)   We know the mults were out there somewhere so it's not an
unfeasible figure !

There were also a time when in S+P mode when I actually wondered if it was
worth my while (time wise) to stop and call a non-IOTA station - consider
how long it would take to work a dozen mainlanders, and then consider just 3
IOTA's would net the same points.   And if just one of those IOTAs was a new
mult it there's no contest (excuse the pun......)   This didn't seem quite
right.

I know it's the rules and this is an old argument that gets kicked off every
July but I can understand the World stations frustration !   I know the
emphasis is meant to be on working IOTA stations, and not World working
World, but I'm an Island entrant who's about to consider almost complete S+P
next year !  It certainly makes things interesting anyway.

It must be possible to statistically work out - considering the number of
IOTAs that would call on average anyway, and the average rate of pure IOTAs
worked during an S+P session, you could calculate the Q's/hour you'd need to
make it worth your while.  :-)

I found it a psychological test - I could hear stations running high rate
pileups, and giving out huge serial numbers, so there is a great pressure to
jump in and do the same thing.   It was difficult to realise a completely
different strategy might be in order, depending on entry class, location,
IOTA rarity and amount of wellie available.

The leading single op island scores do generally show high QSO totals
relative to mults so the results in practice don't quite bear it out, or
maybe it's just that no-one's been that brave yet !

This is not meant to be a flame against the contest or the rules - just an
observation.

Lee G0MTN (now with strategy pondering induced headache)