[UK-CONTEST] IOTA 2009 Further Thoughts.

[brian coyne]

One of the great benefits in getting results published quickly is that the event is still fresh in the mind. Most helpful therefore in seeing what the opposition did, what needs to be improved, tactics to be changed etc. 

I had a very pleasant afternoons fishing today. Fishing alone is a great time for thinking things out especially pleasant when there are no lifestyle problems to sort out and when there are no twitches on the line to interupt the chain of thought, the sea is still far too warm here.

I was pondering upon how I had been 'creamed' by the two stations who finished above me in my category and what I could do about that next time.
The perplexing thing was that I was unable to come up with a solution that would be sure to move me up the ladder.

I operated in the 12hr LP SOU CW category with around 800 q's and 104 mlts after log checking. Now those q's may suggest that I spent the time running but that was not the case. Knowing the importance of mlt's I busted a gut
s&p'ing and attempting to work them but I just couldn't break the piles on those eu iota stn's, most are just beyond that first skip bounce and on hf my 100w just couldn't hack it. On lf my mlt count is always going to be low due to poor antennas and the sites inability to improve upon them.
No matter how often I returned to a mlt's qrg the large pile was still there and I was unable to make it. I never encountered such difficulty, not even in cqww.

Reflecting on the problem made me realise that cqww is held over 2 days so there are better chances second day for smaller pistols as piles ease up, but more importantly than that I have concluded that IOTA is different from any other contest. How is IOTA different? - consider my counter, 5B. In many small contests which I do I may be the only entrant from here so am desirable as a mlt. However in the biggies such as CQWW or CQWPX there will be 6 or 7 serious entrants from here plus one or two casuals, so not so much demand for any one particular 5B stn. With IOTA there are a great many unique islands on air where there is only one active station, so with more than 2000 active stations looking for them demand is insatiable. I got the impression that those stns must have been running all of the time as very few seemed to call me.

My conclusions from all of this are that I could improve upon my score next year with much more time s&p'ing but it may still  not be significant enough to improve the placing, needing an extra 30/50 mlts is a mighty big challenge unless I can find some way of improving my 40/80mtr antennas, that is the biggest challenge.

73  Brian 5B4AIZ (C4Z).