[UK-CONTEST] MM0Q. IOTA Contest - The Best!!

[Jim Martin]

What a great weekend!  IOTA is certainly my favourite contest and this year 
I managed my best ever score from the Summer Isles.  Lots of tales of woe 
before hand, losing a 100m drum of Westflex over the side in choppy seas, 
logging program not working, stripped rotator gears on the rotatable dipole, 
cut coax due to duff rotator etc etc.
However portable contesting is all about managing all these variables and 
making the best of what we have available for the 24 hours.
The full sized 80m and 40m Spiderbeam fishing pole verticals made a huge 
difference, always out performing the low dipoles I had set up to work the 
UK.  Maybe I am too far north to benefit from low dipoles on these bands to 
work into central G?  Shock of the contest was being called by 59++ VC1W at 
9.15 on 40m, over four hours past my sunrise.  Sadly I had worked him during 
the night! The rotatable dipole is certainly a very effective antenna but 
with hoards of midges waiting for me to rush out and change the direction of 
the dipole I tended to leave it running NE/SW.
The WX was interesting with intense periods of static laden rain making copy 
very difficult.  Everything except the main rotator survived the force 5/6 
winds during the afternoon.
I had been planning to use Win-Test with its very good IOTA mult display but 
there is a problem running SO2R with the MK2R and Yeasu and Icom rigs.  That 
was a show stopper so reverted back to N1MM using a second laptop for mult 
display and it performed flawlessly.
Band conditions overall as expected,10m was dead, 15m opened for 20 minutes 
so the main stays were 20 and the low bands.  There is a huge lack of DX in 
the log and I was mostly unable to break the DX pile-ups so need to look at 
that for next year.
This years QTH was high up on the east side of the island but I am still 
blocked at this location towards NA.  Maybe next year it's a tent job higher 
up the slope but the home comforts of the house are possibly too appealing!
Decided not to use the cluster this year and found with the SO2R set-up I 
was busy enough searching and putting stations on the band map.  I suspect 
that if I arrived on frequency after a new mult was spotted I would be well 
down the food chain anyway so could have lost time instead of gaining an 
advantage.
Final numbers 1250 Qs and about 1,690,00 points.  No doubt the adjudication 
process will take its toll on that!
Already planning for next year, Possibly a remote station on top of the 
island controlled from the house (midgie free) or really long runs of heliax 
(anyone got 200m spare?) planning is half the fun!
73 and thanks to all for the Qs
Jim,  MM0BQI / MM0Q
Summer Isles,  EU092



IOTA DXpedition EU092 GB5SI  22 July - 5 August and 15 - 21 September.
                                                    MM0Q in IOTA contest
                             EU108 MM0BQI/P  Lunga, Treshnish Islands 1 - 3 
September.
                                                     www.qsl.net/mm0bqi