[UK-CONTEST] The Not So Rocky Road To The Summer Isles 2010 - GM1J

[jim martin]

All of a sudden it  was mid July and the IOTA contest loomed large on
the horizon.  I had ‘managed’ to keep preparation to a minimum and
then all of a sudden, the mad rush!   Following last year’s disaster I
was persuaded to ‘keep it simple’ and avoid any breakages to me and
the kit!
Arrived on Tanera 0900 Thursday morning after driving through the
night.  Two days of fine WX then followed and even had time to kayak
round the islands.  I prepared the antennas during the two sunny days
then final erection in situ Saturday morning
A very easy antenna set up for 2010:
80m Inverted L using a 12m SpiderBeam pole with 8 x 20m ground radials.
40m quarter wave vertical on a 12m SpiderBeam pole with 4 tuned
radials.  Also on here was a 20m quarter wave vertical using the same
feed point with 2 elevated tuned radials.
10/15/20m ground plane on an 18m SpiderBeam pole with the feed point
at 10m. Separate vertical wires and tuned radials for each band.
No aluminium this year just simple bits of wire, left the rotary
dipole and 40/80 dipole at home and not sure if I missed them.
The HF antenna was 100m from the shack, fed with Westflex, almost on
the ridge with a clear view of EU and a reasonable path to the west.
40/80m verticals were separated by 100m slightly lower down on the
east side of the hill.
Inside the shack the’ hub’ was the microHAM MK2R SO2R controller which
really is a magic piece of kit.  This controlled the K3, IC746Pro,
bandpass filters and antenna selection.  N1MM logging.  Due to pilot
error this did not quite come off 100% but it was a great improvement
on previous efforts.  No cluster this year and had fun searching for
new mults on the second radio.
Things started well and I managed to hold a run frequency for ages on
20m then the big boys moved in and I had to QSY!  100w to a wire
antenna cannot compete with fixed EU stations running kilowatts,
anyone have an answer?  Mine is to make island Qs worth 15 points and
non-island to non-island Qs worth 1 point.  This might tempt the HP
running stations to cut down the rate and concentrate on mult hunting.
(On second thoughts, no chance!)
It was funny to hear comments from running stations like ‘Standby the
G station, ON5XXX you are 59’!  Not quite grasped the scoring concept
I think!
Band conditions on 20/40 were okay.  10/15 were a dead loss for me and
80m was wiped out with QRN.   Only 49 Qs made on these bands with a
catastrophic  loss of mults over previous years.

Overall a good outing. 18 hours operating, 3 hours sleep when the
bands were dead over night and closed down an hour and a half early
due to dense fog drifting in over the island. (No radar on the wee
boat and had to get back to work on Monday morning)
The aerials seemed to work okay.  Still not convinced about the
inverted L for some reason but band conditions did not allow a proper
evaluation.  The triband ground plane worked really well but again
conditions on 10/15 did not allow for proper evaluation.  Anyone fancy
trying to model this design to see how the theory plays out?
Couple of minor problems through the weekend.
No CW keying for the first half of the contest, due to damaged lead.
Terrible breakthrough when transmitting on 40m.  It was there
regardless of which rig was transmitting. (Most likely station layout
to blame as the K3 tends not to ‘hear’ other bands!)
The other very limiting factor is inability to work close in mults, I
missed a whole raft of ‘easy’ multipliers from all of the Scottish
Islands.  Not sure why this should be as the antennas could ‘see’ most
of the islands unlike previous years when I was stuck behind Mel Mor.
Something to think about for next year.  I will post some photos on
the GMDX and CDXC Yahoo Group pages.
Thanks to all for the Qs, already booked our return visit for next
year so see you then!
73
Jim,  MM0BQI
GM1J,  EU92