[UK-CONTEST] IOTA - DXpeditions.

[Paul O'Kane]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Martin" <MM0BQI at thersgb.net>
(Original) Subject: Re: [UK-CONTEST] IOTA - G3BJ (G5W)


> it seems the nature of the contest is that most of the big
> loud sigs are not mult hunting!  They occupy about 5 KC/s of
> the band with their disgusting signals and call CQ for 24
> hours. IOTA is in danger of becoming just another  '5nn TU'
> type contest unless we can rescue its 'unique selling point'

I agree with what Jim says.  The question is how do we wean
island stations with "big loud sigs" from calling CQ for 24
hours?

One option might be to reduce the points for QSOs with non-
island (world) stations to, say, 1 point rather than 3 as at
present.  This will make a single island QSO worth 15 other
QSOs, and working islands at 10 QSOs per hour would be as good
as other QSOs at 150 per hour.  One "problem" with this
approach is there will be more and more appeals, during the
contest, for "island stations only" - but perhaps that's no
harm.

Island DXpedition stations deserve every encouragement, and it
seems that a unique IOTA reference is not always enough. I'd
suggest an extra incentive for QSOs with DXpedition stations
- perhaps 30 points rather than 15 for other island QSOs.

How could DXpeditions identify themselves as such to others,
without any overheads in terms of callsign suffixes or longer
exchanges?  They could do it by substituting DX for the
continent identifier in their IOTA reference - for example DX092
instead of EU092.  The software (mine anyway!) knows the
continent, it would log the reference as DX092, but track it
(for multiplier purposes) as EU092, and award 30 points to the
station logging the DXpedition (not to the DXpedition itself for
the same QSO).  DXpedition to DXpedition QSOs would score 30
points in each direction.

When integrating an IOTA contest log with the station log, the
post-contest program should export the DXpedition references
with the correct continental prefix. For my own part, that's a
simple modification.  

Of course, "30 points for DXpeditions" is just a suggestion -
it could be any agreed value.  

Any other suggestions, comments?

73,
Paul EI5DI