[UK-CONTEST] IOTA report, GM0B

[paterson gordon]

Hi Stewart et al.

After reading your plea's for IOTA stories, I decided to write a short note
of GM0B's activities on Bute EU123 last weekend.

Due to work pressures and me having to work until 6pm on Friday this year,
we decided on a cut down IOTA trip to Bute rather than not go at all. We are
not a serious entry but we enjoy the pileups (hopefully) and giving away the
EU123 multiplier to many stations.

We decided to take a 60' trailer and a tribander and wire verticals for 40
and 80. There would be two radios, my K3 and an FT950, 2 x Acom 1000's and
Wintest for the logging program. The shack is my 8 man tent.

So, after packing the car until about 12:45 am on Friday night, I met up
with Phil GM0LIR and Iain GM0OQV on the M74 while heading down to the ferry
at Wemyss Bay for the first ferry at 8am. Tom MM0BHX is waiting at the
terminal when we arrive. The ferry is on time and we are on the island at
around 8:30am. Only 4.5 hours to setup.

The QTH is on a reasonable high point about 3 miles South of Rothesay with
clear views in all directions although it is about 2 miles to the coast East
and West and a little more South. The mountains on Arran look spectacular
from there.

Ian and Phil setup the tower and the tribander. Tom and I setup the tent. I
then build up the stations. Only a few gremlins beset us. The tribander
seemed to tune up fine on the ground on 20 and 15 but nowhere on 10. A quick
twist on one of the the 10m traps and SWR returned to normal. A quick
dismantle of the trap and a tightening of one screw resolved the issue.

The tribander was attached to the K3 and the verticals to the 950. Using
Wintest, we can swap the run station and S&P stations easily. More on
Wintest later. A 40m vertical was installed just before start time with only
the 80m inverted L to be built.

So, Tom went onto open up on 20m at 1:12. CQ contest. Phil went onto the
mult station on 40 or 15. The vertical being a quarter wave on 15m tuned
well there too. Other gremlins: turned out the tribander although 1:1 SWR on
14.125 had 6:1 SWR on 14.000. Most definitely had been tuned for SSB
portion. So, we built a vertical dipole on a 13 m spiderpole. This although
not as much gain as the beam, definitely did it's job.

Other than that, I thought activity seemed slower than previous years. We
thought our verticals never worked as well as previous years???  Short skip
conditions were noticed on 20m on Sunday morning and we actually worked 40
G's in 75 minutes. A unexpected bonus. We finished up on 10m which had
opened nicely into Eu with loads of Q's but not many mults to be had.

The Wintest issue is a minor pain. Wintest has been blamed recently for
miscopy in the 80m CC's. I don't see how that could happen as the issue
occurs when there is more than than one station on the network working
stations. Not the case with the CC's. It is more hassle during IOTA but can
be prevented in the main by the mult station "reserving" a QSO number by
saving a QSO before you work a mult. Even if you don't end up working the
mult, you just work AN Other station and use the "reserved" QSO number.

So, everything worked, nobody injured, weather reasonable and a successfuly
enjoyable weekend was had by all.

Band    SSB/IOTA    CW/IOTA
80         138/35             6/5
40         235/41           89/20
20        815/79            11/9
15         42/30            37/18
10       105/18             1/1

Total  1353/203        144/53

Grand Tot   2,502,144

Cheers.

Gordon
MM0GPZ