[UK-CONTEST] IOTA 2011 (GM3F)

[PETER CLEALL]

IOTA from a small urban garden

The lead up to the weekend was not good.

On wednesday my wife trod on my 10m roach pole and split a section, it was
of course the one in the middle.
On Thursday I mowed the lawn ready to put down the radials. It was very
dusty and within 2 hours I had raging hay fever with lasted through to
sunday pm.
 On Friday I fitted a splint on the roach pole and tried to get a half wave
for 20m, to the g0kya design, working. This was a total failure, dx signals
sounded great and much better than on the longwire but I could not resonate
it and get a decent TX SWR.

>From here on it was all good news.

Before taking the roach pole down I realised that the vertical wire for the
g0kya design should work as a quater wave on 40m.Sure enough it seemed to be
a very good match and switching between the 30m longwire and the vertical
showed better low angle reception on the vertical.Then realising it would be
a three quarter wave on 15m. Sure enough it also matched well and seemed
good for middle east and Mediterranean.


Friday afternoon I knocked up a vertical dipole for 10m using couple of
pieces of "Harrison Drape" metal curtain rail with their propriety plastic
wall mountings to hold the dipole on to a piece of 2*2 softwood.


On saturday I had a longstanding lunch appointment so would be unable to
start until 1200UTC. Consequently everything was set up around 11am,
including remembering to reset the computer against internet standard time.

IC7000
netbook running SD
3 way manual coax switch
30m longwire at 6m height
40/15m vertical with 16 radials
10m vertical dipole

2 boxes of throat sweets and paracamol to combat the hayfever soar throat
and headaches.

During the contest I went very gently under S&P operation, stopped for meals
and had a good nights sleep. I had great fun. Worked couple of new
countries, 40 Island groups and "played" checking the reception of some
stations against the longwire and the verticals.


80m 40m 20m 15m 10m Total
QSOs: 11 28 34 31 6 110
Mults: 10 17 16 12 4 59


A small score compared with many, but my results were about 4 times better
than last year.  Thats a big challenge for next year.

I thought I would send this in to illustrate that all can learn and make
progress, no matter what their location and circumstances.

regards

peter
G8AFN



On 3 August 2011 13:18, Stewart GM4AFF <stewart at gm4aff.net> wrote:

> It's strange that there aren't more contest reports on here for the premier
> RSGB contest of the year. (Or is it?)
> I only returned from my 5X1SF mini-expedition late on Friday night (without
> my luggage) so I couldn't handle my usual favourite 24 hrs SSB section. I
> decided on 12 hrs Mixed mode. These 12 hour sections are great - strategy
> is
> far more important than I realised. In fact, although I ran a little, I
> would say it was a mistake, and I should have spent the whole contest S &
> P.
> I spent too long on 40m on the Sat evening and should have gone to 80m
> earlier - that left me with only 1 hour on 80m which was not enough, and I
> lost a lot of mults. Being located in GM it is very difficult to catch all
> those nice GM mults, even on 80m. Also, in a single mode 24 hour section
> SO2R is a huge advantage, but in 12 hours mixed mode it is totally
> unneccessary - you seldom run, so you have no time to work the 2nd radio.
> And an amp is probably unneccesary too, so the 12 hour low power and QRP
> sections are something which more people could consider (as Gordon and
> Bernie pointed out). For me it was an interesting learning experience, but
> a
> thoroughly enjoyable one
>
>  Band  CW Qs  CW Mults  Ph Qs  Ph Mults
> ----------------------------------------
>   80:   22       16      20       10
>   40:   84       24      72       28
>   20:  130       37     116       43
>   15:   30       20      32       20
>   10:   12        8      12        8
> ----------------------------------------
> Total:  278      105     252      106
>
> Total Score = 950,766
>
> Used a K3 and an FT1000mp, an Alpha 91 and Alpha 76, four monobanders, 80m
> vertical and beverages and Win-Test.
>
> This is the worst contest for bad operating technique. I don't know why,
> but
> these island expeditions with ops who are more into IOTA than contesting
> just assume everyone knows their callsign. (And strangely, most people
> calling them do.) Even when there is no pile-up they complete a QSO by
> saying "QRZ". Failing that they'll finish by saying "73's" and then the
> frequency sits quiet for about 20 seconds before they then decide to call
> CQ. And as for the people calling with two letters only. If I didn't lose
> out, I think I ought to log them as two letter calls too - that'll teach
> them!
>
> 73
> Stewart
> GM4AFF / GM3F
>
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