[UK-CONTEST] IOTA 2011

[Darren G0TSM]

I was going to go to the IOW but our dog had to have an operation on 
Friday so I stayed at home to keep an eye on him.
I operated in the 12 hour high power SSB unassisted section as G0TSM. I 
have an FTDX5000 and the plan was to run a little and find mults on the 
2nd Rx. For those that dont know this radio the 2nd Rx is capable of 
Rxing on different bands, not like the FT1000MP where the sub Rx only 
performs well when on the same band as the main Rx. However, I found it 
too slow and distracting to CQ and nudge the 2nd Rx up a little to try 
and find mults. This is where SO2R would be much better (for different 
bands) as you have more time for listening. I did manage to park the 2nd 
Rx on some mults while waiting for them to ID and when timed right I 
could flip VFOs, work them, and come back to my run freq without losing 
hardly any time.

My Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning sessions were difficult as I 
could only hear stations from East to South-West that are S9 and over 
due to solar panel QRM. When the sun moved around on Sat evening the 
noise dropped to S4-5 so  made it a little easier.

Congrats to the GM* Island stations who spotted the Sporadic E openings 
and started asking for 15 point G*s and other island stations. There's a 
lot of points to be made from working boring old G stations in this 
contest.
Some monster signals from DM6V and DL4MCF on 15M, well over 9+40. And on 
10M YL7X running and their 2nd station calling mults at the same time. 
They must have bombproof front ends!

best Island DX for me was some BY and JA islands on 20M (I cant recall 
even working mainland JA) Best 3 point DX was JT and ET who both called me.

QSOs just over 750 with around 500,000 points (my best IOTA score). 
Although I could have beaten this by working just 190 multipliers. Thats 
1 mult every 3-1/2 minutes, seems easy when i put it like that.

Station
FTDX5000MP + VL1000 + £14.99 headset from Argos (you have to laugh)
10/15/20 Heaxbeam @14M
40/80M Windom @17M
Writelog 10


73 Darren G0TSM


PS, and yes I did watch the dog, I had an eyetoy camera on his basket 
with the picture on one of my PC monitors. :-)