[UK-CONTEST] IOTA contest thoughts

[Tom Wylie]

My only comment on this is that on the year we won the contest I remember
having a difficult time pulling the
"less experienced contest operators" from a high run to USA on 20m, and
instead made them work G stations on 80m.
The Gs were all IOTA high pointers and easier to work than the USA mainland.

I learned over the years that the secret of the IOTA Contest is - strategy
and a good antenna farm as well as a good antenna switching arrangement.
Somebody, I think Don Field , once said "the multiplier is king" and nothing
is more true than in the IOTA Test.
Put your BEST operators on the MULT station and the good ops on the run.
Use an FT1000D on the MULT - split the output one on SSB and one on CW and
have a wager as to whom can work the most mults.
Dont forget to mult on the RUN band.   Hard to do, but
we got round it by (for example) if the run station was on SSB, ask the mult
to QSY to CW then it becomes the responsibility of the MULT station to
accept and work the mult then try to QSY him to another band, and let the
run station carry on, if the QRM was too great, the run station paused.....
Practise and the desire to do better pays dividends.

I doubt if ANY of the GM stations who frequent the western Islands will
achieve much in the Contest as I really think that this is the wrong
location - too far north and too far west.
We were lucky in 2000 that the big 9A stations hadn't cottened on.
I would like to see a serious european effort from the Carribean.   A lot of
the Carib station seem to think that they are DX and stations will call them
and totally neglect searching for mults.
The Mult is King - Long live the King.
73 de tom
GM4FDM (GM5V)
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dave Sharred" <dave at g3nkc.fsnet.co.uk>
To: "Uk-Contest at Contesting.Com" <uk-contest at contesting.com>
Sent: Thursday, August 05, 2004 9:40 PM
Subject: [UK-CONTEST] IOTA contest thoughts


> It's good to see the comments from all about IOTA contest. Thanks to Don,
> Chris, Dave (BUO), Jim, Zoli and Colin for sharing their views.
>
> Colin, in my opinion , is very close to the mark; and I agreed with I
think
> all of his opinions. I was going to comment also; but he beat me to it.
>
> After reading Jim's note; I was going to analyse the ratio of 15 pointers
to
> 3 pointers; from our near 3000 QSO's. Sometimes, this is a trade-off in
> working 40m, hoping to bag some G's and other islands at a slower rate, or
> running 20m at a much higher rate but less average points per QSO!
>
> As all of the leading stations know; mults are imperative though to having
a
> good final score; and your strategy has to maximise that also.
>
> If we discouraged non-island stations from participating; it would surely
be
> a much lesser contest; lose it's appeal; and maybe end up with support
> nearer to the BERU contest !!! This event is a major attraction in the
> contesting calendar; and, as the adage goes; if it aint broke, don't fix
it
> !
>
> Zoli's comment on the EU appeal is also very valid - strangely enough
> though; this means that you don't necessarily have to put up big arrays;
> especially for 80/40m, to be competitive - it is high angle radiation on
> these bands.  From MD4K; JA were frozen out this year, by the
disturbances,
> as were most of the NA participants. It was pleasing however, to note that
> KP2/AA2BU was doing very well; at least in terms of QSO's.  I suspect, as
in
> CQWW, there are "sweet spots" around the world to win the contest;
probably
> Eu is fortunate to be in the sweet spot, by virtue of the number of
Islands
> within a relatively small radius
>
> I disagree on changing the mult rules - by having mults per band and mode;
> it encourages one to use all bands and modes - this helps the overall QSO
> rate for everybody; if the ruling were changed then maybe there is less
> incentive to give your juicy mult out on, say, CW - you may find that
single
> mode entries would have the dominant score!
>
> I too, like Zoli, would like to see automatic credit for our own island -
> clearly some IOTA refs have a big choice of stations to call on , for
their
> own mult. I suspect that we worked more GJ stations than those heard from
> GD! If this lines up with IOTA rules; this is an excellent point !
>
> Finally as was also pointed out - this contest sports so many sections
that
> surely there must be a realistic category for all entrants. Any newcomer
to
> this contest is well advised to study the rules / categories/ results from
> the previous year, before deciding what category he/she should compete in.
>
> As a final comment; I just looked at our log for Jim, Dave, and Chris's
> entry; and saw that we worked MM0Q on 2 band/modes only (80/40SSB); M8C on
4
> bands (80/40 SSB/CW); and GU8D on 4 band/modes (80/20 SSB; 80/40CW).  What
> this shows I am not sure - either conditions were poor on HF for local
> inter-G; or we are all poor at passing our mults!  Something to think
about!
>
> 73
>
> Dave G3NKC
> Member of the MD4K team; and QSL manager
>
> PS - We will publish our score when we know what it is - we have major log
> problems, that we are still trying to unravel!
>
>
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