[UK-CONTEST] IOTA contest - the debate

[Les Allwood]

Greetings one and all,

It seems that we have the makings of an interesting debate about the rules for the IOTA contest. It has already been useful to me as I've never REALLY liked this contest, although I'd never been able to decide quite why. After all, as an RSGB member on an island it seemed almost tailor-made!!! Now I realise that it is the feeling of helplessness, knowing that there are some "new ones" out there rabbiting away on SSB and knowing that, if and when they visit the CW part of the bands, it will be a) past my bedtime, b) at a time when there is no path between us, or c) when I have other things to do (not all of us are full-time contesters!!!).

So, after a few years of "making the effort" to put in an entry, this year I decided to just make the QSOs I wanted and send in a checklog.

There have already been some good suggestions about potential changes to the rules, so here is my wish-list -

1. Separate contests for SSB and CW. It is rather anti-social to clog up all parts of the bands, and this is increasingly true as the contest becomes ever bigger.

2. Adjustments to scoring as follows -
        a) same IOTA ref = 5 points
        b) non-island station worked by island station = 3 points
        c) non-island station worked by another non-island station = ZERO (after all, this is an island contest!!!)

3. No restriction on operating time in any category.

4. If idea 1 is not deemed viable, multi-operator stations may be single mode (currently two friends who decide to nip over to an island with an FT817 and a piece of wet string MUST be multi-mode - not very encouraging)

5. If idea 2c is not deemed viable, then non-island stations must not have more than 50% of non-island stations in their logs. This would make it essential for these big guns to search out the smaller island stations instead of just "calling CQ for 24 hours".

I quite liked Paul's idea for making island expeditions more attractive, but I think it would be a difficult rule to promulgate successfully and just as difficult to monitor, whilst inevitably causing confusion to the casual "passers-by" in the contest.

These are just my personal thoughts as a part-time and "little pistol" contester.

Over to the REAL contesters........

73 de Les, G3VQO