[UK-CONTEST] GM0ADX - IOTA report

Tue Aug 9 23:03:48 PDT 2011

I echo Stewart's comments - looks like you had a really fun time!

73 Cris
GM4FAM

> What a great report Barry, the video is brilliant too. And you beat your
> target!
> Well done.
> 73
> Stewart
> GM4AFF (GM3F)
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: uk-contest-bounces at contesting.com
> [mailto:uk-contest-bounces at contesting.com]On Behalf Of GM3YEH
> Sent: 09 August 2011 09:33
> To: UK-Contest
> Subject: [UK-CONTEST] GM0ADX - IOTA report
>
>
> The GM0ADX crew from Kilmarnock and Loudoun ARC (GM3OZB, GM3YEH, GM3ZRT,
> GM4OSS, GM0DJG, MM0BIM) went to Skye again for the IOTA contest this year.
> This is the second time there.  We travelled up on Thursday and returned
> on
> Monday.  The weather was fairly kind but during the contest we had some
> quite high winds and rain...but the trusty old 1940 tent withstood all
> that
> the elements could throw at it yet again!  It was a bit cold at night.
> One
> down-side to having some settled weather was that the midges were in full
> flight...even the locals were running for cover.
>
> The run station was 400W with a triband beam (10/15/20) at 30 feet,
> quarter
> wave vertical for 40m and an 80m inverted V dipole on the 30 foot mast.
> The
> multiplier station was 100W with a triband beam (10/15/20) at 30 feet with
> 40m and 80m inverted V dipoles on the 30 foot mast.  Logging software was
> N1MM.   The run station was in the old tent in the middle of a peaty field
> of heather (perfect for midges).  The mult station was in a garage loaned
> to
> us by the owner of the site.  The garage was also the canteen area for the
> weekend.
>
> Our target is always the same for this contest - try to do better than
> last
> time.  Last year we reached our highest QSO count ever with 1,500
> contacts.
>  This is such a high score for us that none of us were confident that we
> could beat that by very much - so we settled for trying to manage 1,500 Qs
> again.  Multipliers last year were a bit low at just under 200 and we were
> sure we could get more mults if we made that our main target.  The team is
> fairly well populated with CW operators but we're not so lucky for SSB so
> we
> always have a bias towards CW Qs.  This obviously costs us SSB multipliers
> so we need to try and address this issue for future years and see if we
> can
> get more of a balance..
>
> On the run station we got off to a good start and were over 200 Qs after a
> couple of hours. It always give the team a good feeling when we manage to
> rack up a decent number of contacts at the start.  On years when we've
> started more slowly there is a general feeling of needing to 'catch up'
> all
> the way through.   The Q rate stayed fairly good throughout and we managed
> to keep pace with our rate for last year.  Some good DX popped up now and
> again but no big DX openings at any time.  We discovered 10m wide open for
> the last 90 minutes but got into that horrible situation where your Q rate
> actually drops because so many stations are calling and it's difficult to
> winkle them out.  We actually had to swap operators at one point to avoid
> the pileup causing madness!
>
> The guys on the mult station kept it active for the full 24 hours and this
> paid dividends and got us a significant increase in multipliers compared
> to
> last year.
>
> So the target for this year was achieved - Q count consolidated and mult
> count increased.  Here are the numbers:
>  Band  Mode  QSOs  Pts  IOTA
>    3.5  CW     131     921   25
>    3.5  LSB    107    1077   35
>      7  CW      323    1665   41
>      7  LSB     73      879     40
>     14  CW     581    2475   44
>     14  USB     77     783    29
>     21  CW      91     525    20
>     21  USB     29     387    25
>     28  CW     101     507   10
>     28  USB     15     105    5
>  Total  Both  1528    9324  274
> Score: 2,554,776
>
> Short video here:
>    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rBl9JQcpqQ
>
> 73 Barry GM3YEH.
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