[UK-CONTEST] IOTA M8C Cray Valley RS

[Dave Lawley]

We didn't go to the Isles of Scilly last year and we really missed it,
so we planned for a return trip in 2009 but found the cost of taking a
car as freight on the Scillonian had doubled. With much pruning of the
equipment list we decided it would all fit in one car (mine) but only just.

There's no RORO ferry, the car has to be lifted into the hold by crane
and this is always a heart-stopping moment. It does limit the amount of
gear and especially antennas that can be taken.

It was great to be back on the islands after two years, but the weather
was showery and we had to dodge the rain while putting up the antennas.
This was also delayed as the local builder had not delivered the
scaffold poles despite several prompts. Club member G4NOW was on a trip
to the islands he was of great help in setting up the antennas,
especially as G0VJG wouldn't arrive until Friday.

I think we were a little rusty after missing it in 2008, and setting up
the station seemed to take longer than in previous visits giving less
time on the air before the contest. We had our traditional boat trip to
the off island of St Agnes for a meal in the Turks Head pub early on
Friday evening, but maybe spent too much time boozing and not enough
discussing tactics.

We knew we should run on phone whenever possible but, time and time
again we could not get anything going on phone but by switching to CW
the rate picked up. The first few hours were good and we were level with
or ahead of MD4K GJ6YB and IS0/OM8A, but as the contest went on our lack
of competitive antennas on 40m especially meant that we dropped behind.
We pushed the multipliers hard all the time but this was sometimes
limited as only three of the five operators are CW contesters.

A sixth team member Andre 2E0BUU was on his first trip with us and was
able to help with multiplier spotting. Chris, G0FDZ doesn't operate but
is there for technical support and usually brings along 10GHz gear, this
time he went way down in frequency and notified Ofcom that he would
operate from IN69UW on 5MHz. This was interesting and signals were good
from all around the UK during the day. As usual we operated the WARC 
bands and 6m outside the contest to hand out EU-011 to as many people as 
possible.

On Monday afternoon we visited the community radio station Radio Scilly
and I gave an interview explaining what we were up to. Clips of this
went out on the hourly local news bulletins, and the full interview can
be downloaded from their web site 
http://www.radioscilly.com/files/cray_valley_radio.mp3

We had great support from the locals, from the farmer whose field and 
cow shed we took over, from local ham John M1IOS, from Sarah in the 
guest house and we are already planning some improvements for next year. 
In the end we achieved 3000 QSOs and the mult total looks good but we 
know we're some way behind the leaders.

  BAND  SSB/IOTA   CW/IOTA  POINTS   AVG
----------------------------------------
    80  259   55  202   52    3885  8.43
    40  454   69  465   76    6123  6.66
    20  645   99  353   79    6168  6.18
    15  137   47   91   54    1938  8.50
    10  280   32  164   31    2310  5.20
----------------------------------------
TOTAL 1775  302 1275  292   20424  6.70
========================================
         TOTAL SCORE : 12 131 856

Operators G4BUO G4TSH 2E0CVN G0VJG G7GLW 2E0BUU G0FDZ
FT2000 + Acom 1000, FT1000MP MkV + Drake L7
Elecraft K2, FT857 for spotting
Win-Test 3.26 networked on 4 laptops
TET tribander up 50ft
10/15m quad up 40ft
40m dipole, vertical
80m broadband dipole
Butternut

Dave G4BUO