[UK-CONTEST] IOTA - From EU120 I.O.W.

[Darren GØTSM]

I operated 12hr/single-op/mixed/100W as G0TSM/P from a not so sunny 
Ryde, Isle of Wight.

The plan was to bash the bands continuously for the first 12 hours then 
head for the 2am ferry back home. Here's what I learnt, good and bad.

The station here was an IC756pro2, P100 laptop, Super Duper IOTA, 
homemade 40M vertical with 2 radials, feed point 8ft above the high tide 
mark (9M pole from dunstable kites £24inc delivery) 10,15,20M rotary 
dipole 28ft above the high tide mark (driven element from old tribander).

1) I took my 756pro2 as my kids back at home wanted to listen to me on 
the air and they know how to work the MP, big mistake!, dual watch in a 
busy contest situation is terrible compared to twin RX's, I can relate 
to VFO A in one ear and B in the other, but not super imposed on each 
other. I lost too much time searching for mults where I could have been 
CQing and looking for mults on the same band on the MP.

2) Never try and put up a 45ft vertical on your own in a high wind! - It 
started out as a sort of battlecreek L for 40/80 but a gust of wind 
caught it and I lost my balance - SPLOSH! the whole thing ended up in 
the sea! I pulled it out by the coax but the 40M trap, top wire and guy 
rope were missing, lost to King Neptune. Whoops no 80M!

3) Take plenty of towels to dry off with, not for the traditional 
British weather, but incase the sea splashes into the 'shack' at high 
tide like it did at mine!.

4) Mounting the vertical next to salt water lowered the resonant freq of 
the 40M vertical. I had to chop 38cm off of the radiator and radials to 
bring the SWR down and thats after the trap went missing.

5) The vertical produced some mental DX signals on 40M, those broadcast 
stations between 7.1 and 7.2 were all pegging the meter with the preamps 
switched off, but that also caused a few problems. That station about 
7.105 was QRMing down to 7083 as it was literally QSB down to 9+50 and 
the rest of the time the meter just sat on the end stop and didn't 
twitch. At home I might have had 1 or 2 b/c stations nearing the 9+60 
mark on my 40ft high Windom, but not all of them. YB0A called me on 40M 
SSB, he was 9+25, much better than I have ever heard him from home. I 
think I have found my spot for CQWW!. But on the downside, the mountain 
of 15 point/Q G stations were mostly well under S9 during the afternoon, 
so I worked only a handful, usually from home tuning up/down 40M on a 
Saturday afternoon you expect to hear quite a lot of G chit chat well 
over S9.

In general,, this was the first time that I have been able to keep hold 
of my run frequencies, except once to MD4K, no grudge held lads ;-) so 
I'm pretty confident my signal was much better than operating from home 
on the mainland with 100W/Dipole, I think even operating from a not so 
rare EU120 had it's advantages, I heard 4 others on the island and they 
were all busy.

I thought that the amount of non-IOTA stations trying to run non-IOTA 
stations was higher than last year, but mostly they just got in the way, 
you know most of them will not put in an entry.

I still need to sort the log out but at the moment it's 521Qs 100 mults 
= 331179 points, but who cares, I had a laugh playing radio for a day.



Darren G0TSM (/P)