[UK-CONTEST] IOTA - Probably the best contest in the world!

[MM0BQI]

Well that's it for another year, packing up tomorrow to go home after two glorious weeks on the Summer Isles!  Changed cottage this year to the east side of the island, great for EU but blocked by the highest point of the island from south through to north-west.
Less Qs this year but due to emphasis on mult hunting ended up with more points.  Very noisy over the weekend on the LF bands and deep QSB on the higher bands. Twenty and fifteen were the main bands with 80m and 40 being hard work due to noise.  Saw all the spots on 10m but only managed a handful of Qs, that's the luck of the draw but the Qs were very welcome!   Only twelve non EU mults worked, 7 NA, 2 AS and 3 AF  Called by a KL7 so that was the icing on the cake!! 
Managed to hold run frequencies for short periods of time until eventually being squeezed out by louder stations.  The S-meter never dropped below 20 over nine!
Called CQ for long periods without replies which had the benefit of increasing the second radio mult hunting activity and thus the score!  Packet pile-ups were fierce if short lived and added lots of points but few mults to the score.
Reached low points early evening and about 0400 with few callers so missed a couple of hours operating and went off to eat and sleep.
I am pondering how much of  a difference there would be to the score if I exclusively went S and P and made a huge increase in mult numbers, one for the mathematicians I suspect but there must be a tipping point somewhere?
News on antennas to follow in a separate post as a follow up for my request for information on dipole versus vertical. Suffice to say I hade one of each and even tried inverted Ls in a quest to fill in all the gaps.
Equipment.
FT1000Mk 5 and IC7400
microHAM MK2R SO2R interface 
ICE BPF
H/B band decoders (one of which went faulty and had to be swapped out for the mult unit with a connector resolder job)
Remote antenna switching unit to switch any antenna to either rig
Logged with N1MM which worked great, bandmap superb but the mult information is naff. (Must look again at WinTest)
Antennas.
Full size verticals on SpiderBeam fishing poles for 80 and 40.
Low 80/40m dipole for NVIS (useless!)
80m inverted L
(Tested all three antennas during last weeks 80m RTTY CC and only managed to work nine stations, did not bode well for IOTA !)
10/15/20 horizontal dipoles with common feed point on 2 x 7m fishing poles @ 10m (Dubbed 'Angel of the north-west' by locals)
20m vertical with tuned radials  feed point 3m above ground
Hustler 4BTV
Brand new Heil proset which after two hours hurt like mad, ended up with it not covering my ears but perched on the back of my head.  Anyone else experienced this?  I am tempted to stretch the plastic headband but am wary of doing this on a £130 headset!
I will post photos from the trip to GMDX and CDXC reflectors in due course.
Cottage already booked for next year, thanks for all the Qs and fun in 2008.
73
Jim,  MM0BQI/MM0Q
EU92 ,  Summer Isles