[UK-CONTEST] M8C IOTA Contest

[Chris Burbanks]

Firstly well done Dave and the team.

Claimed scores seem to be very sparse this year, both on here and 3830. I am
putting a little spreadsheet together detailing top Multi-op groups
band/mode Qs and mults. I've only got 6 so far. Still waiting for MD4K,
EJ2MT and G5XV from G/EI plus an IH9. It will be freely available when I
have a few more.

I have done some analysis on our mults and came to the same conclusion as
Dave that we need to grab more mults on the Run band. One other area that I
highlighted was our lack of finding the big Multi-op groups. We have been ok
before but I think we relaxed too much with the Sixpak / Acom 2000 combo,
thinking that would do it for us! I reckon we lost about 50 mults that way.

As regards prefix, I agree with Dave. We believe the GU prefix stands out
and does give us some advantage. at one stage it looked as though the GU
Club HQ would not be available any more so we considered Scillies, but ruled
it out mainly on the prefix but also on logistics. (Sark was even worse for
getting the gear on).

One point we have noticed is the high cost of public transport to islands
around the UK compared with that of some of the other Eu countries. The
total cost of 5 of us crossing to GU, hotel (3*) and food was about £400 a
head, based on 3 staying 5 nights, 1 staying 4 nights and 2 staying 3
nights. The car alone cost £160 and average passenger ferry/flight fare is
£95.

It was still most enjoyable though, G3SJJ

-----Original Message-----
From: uk-contest-bounces at contesting.com
[mailto:uk-contest-bounces at contesting.com]On Behalf Of Dave Lawley
Sent: 05 August 2004 10:08
To: UK Contest Reflector
Subject: [UK-CONTEST] M8C IOTA Contest


 >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
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