[UK-CONTEST] M8C IOTA Contest

[Dave Lawley]

 >Don,G3BJ wrote  "I think the guys in the UK on a "unique" multiplier 
 >have a distinct advantage when it comes to volume of Qs"

While I agree with some of Jim's comments, there is another level of 
difference. We operated from EU-011 as M8C and felt we were at a 
disadvantage compared with GU8D, MD4K and similar who had a non-G 
prefix, which attracts country hunters. Unless you're an IOTA chaser, 
M8C looks just like plain old G, with a slightly more attractive prefix.

We certainly didn't have a 'stack of Alphas'. We took the back seats out 
of G0VJG's car and stuffed it with radio gear. We had to make special 
arrangements with the Isles of Scilly Steamship company to get the car 
shipped to the island. Both of our main antennas were only at a height 
of 33ft, admittedly on a good site with a clear sea take-off to JA. We 
only worked one JA.

Conditions this year were very poor. We found overnight that we couldn't 
run SSB on any bands, and resorted almost entirely to CW. This is from 
the extreme south-west of the country, which probably wasn't affected as 
badly as stations further north.

I see we worked EU-092 on two slots, both phone, and I'd venture to 
suggest that if you're going to operate with 100W and a vertical, you'd 
better make sure to bring plenty of CW operators along! It's well known 
that you don't need such a big station on CW to be competitive. Outside 
of the contest I had a little fun on 10MHz CW with 100w and a dipole up 
25ft. The pileups got so big that at one point I had to run split.

There are some duff multipliers in there which have to be sorted out so 
our claimed score is likely to be slightly under the rough figures shown 
below. We're very pleased with the QSO total, and the best run was by 
Ralph 2E0ATY right at the beginning when he put 112 10m phone Qs into 
the log in the first 40 minutes. That was pretty much it for 10 metres!

Our big failing was lack of attention to multipliers, caused in part by 
difficulties with the GPRS packet connection, but the main problem is 
that most of our ops aren't very experienced at picking up mults while 
maintaining a run. That's the main area for improvement next year. The 
team of G0VJG M3CVN 2E0ATY G7GLW G0FDZ G4BUO had a great time and are 
definitely thinking about a return visit in 2004.

Dave G4BUO


	CW			PHONE		
BAND	QSOs	Points	Mults	QSOs	Points	Mults
80	187	1329	38	230	1902	35
40	217	1263	40	613	5607	57
20	136	852	36	519	2817	75
15	25	279	18	338	1926	56
10	2	18	2	115	465	9

16458	X	366 =	6023628