[UK-CONTEST] IOTA Debate

[John Dunnington]

	Good to have it now when fresh in the mind..

As with most years I have things which must take preference for part of the
first few hours which rules out a serious 24-hr entry. This year by way of a
change I dusted the Heil Microphone and went Mixed Mode planning 12-hrs as
being achievable. From 1200 through 2200 I managed less than 3-hrs operating
so another late night which petered out around 0230 for lack of stations. I
had worked the big boys and most others seemed to have retired.
On returning to the fray at 0700 it was obvious something was wrong odd
signals on 20m but 40m was the only band really alive. 10/15 stayed pretty
much dead through to the end. So looks like I missed out during the first
6-8 hours of the contest. Most interesting QSO 2xSSB wih Andy (G3AB @ M6C)
two diehard CW op's on SSB..whatever next. My score is irrelevant but 440K
mainly on 80/40 since I had no antenna for 20/15 other than my X-7 pointing
skywards at ground level and a great 4-over-4 stack on 10m but without the
ether in your favour useless. I did manage 27-QSO's on 10m between
1353-1417z inc a rather dubious JA7YAF wkd after a UA9 so who knows. The
band then died.


I have to agree in regard to comments made about big pileup's running with
no station ID and often missing the IOTA Ref from the exchange waiting 8-10
QSO's to find worked already..this somehow has to be addressed but how
to police it is another matter. It did seem to happen more on SSB or maybe I
am biased. As for overmodulated shout boxes they should be confined to the
scrap heap; several I listened to and the op's voice was fine until the box
was activated to give him a rest..perhaps they dont have test gear to set
them up. I did start making notes of the worst cases but then had second
thoughts and fed the paper into my shredding machine at the end of the
contest. Listening to some, the serial's went up at alarming rates for
consecutive QSO's even given they were in theory running a second station
for mults.

The idea of nil points or very low points for non-island to non-island QSO's
is an old orange box stance I have always had. My preference is for them to
be banned, as many say "It is an Island based contest". What reaction we
could expect I know not but in my years of inputting logs into computers
there are still a lot of folks out there who only work island stations
during their operating periods in the contest. They will never win anything
but do their bit for activity during the contest and some of them are Island
Residents.

Yes Don those 9A islands must be pretty crowded physically and RF wise..

Cheers

John


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