[UK-CONTEST] IOTA contest

[Dave Sergeant]

Some of the mail in the past few days discusses ways to 'improve the image' 
of the IOTA contest in the international contest community.  It is obvious that 
the contest is a success, judging by the QSO rates and scores that have 
been posted on here.

Perhaps I can be allowed to post a few feelings from myself, who did not 
enter the contest partly because of other committments, and I am not an 
IOTA chaser.  For such contests which I don't seriously enter I use them as 
an opportunity to work new slots and countries.  Conditions being what they 
were however (I would say dire!), and with most of the activity being from 
European islands, there was a dearth of QSOs in that category and I rapidly 
lost interest - it was just 'another contest' for me.  In addition, as there is no 
QRP section, there is little encouragement for QRP activity (I run 5W into a 
long wire from home..).

So in the end I had just two QSOs, but one of them was FR5FD on 28MHz 
so my time wasn't wasted!

If the standing of the contest is to be improved it should be made more 
attractive to the casual operator, like myself and not just for the serious big 
station entries which seems to be the case at the moment.

73s Dave G3YMC
dsergeant at iee.org
dsergeant at btinternet.com
http://www.dsergeant.btinternet.co.uk