[UK-CONTEST] IOTA Contest - M7X (EU-120)

[Darren Collins (G0TSM)]

M7X (G0TSM) Single Op(Unassisted) - High Power - SSB - 12HR

         10m   15m   20m   40m   80m  Total
QSOs:    10    53   177   377    68    685
Mults     7    21    36    43    15    122
Point   130   595  1365  3625   730   6445

Claimed score: 786290

The station was an IC7000, Amplifier and inverted V dipoles @10M.

I booked the QTH on the Isle of Wight as a last minute trip as I was 
intending to operate from an EU123 island from the car. However due to a 
misunderstanding on my part with the owner of a holiday caravan I ended 
up without accommodation.

My first choice of QTH on the IOW turned out to be around 3 miles from 
G7N, and its never a good idea to plan to have your front end squashed, 
so lucky I checked. The next IOW QTH wasnt in a good spot but time was 
running out to make the booking so I decided take the Quadra and run 
high power.

On arrival the QTH was far worse than it looked on Google Earth or on a 
map. The cottage was at the bottom of a valley with hills all the way 
around. The farmer said I could use his fields so I started to set up V 
dipoles for 10/15/20 around 40M away from the shack and V dipoles for 
40/80 about the same distance in another direction. Usually it would 
take me an hour to set up the antennas but 4 hours later I and went and 
watched the Olympics opening with my daughter. It honestly took me two 
hours to untangle a mass of wire/nylon cord after one of the spools fell 
apart.

The next morning I was up at 4am with some help from a pair of 
cockerels! At sunrise I was in the field with the analyser and by 10am I 
had the antennas sorted and the shack set up. After some breakfast and 
audio tests on 40M I was all ready to play..

In the contest I thought I'd have a run on 10, then 15, then 20 and then 
go out for dinner. As I CQd on 10M the first caller was an IS0 at 9+. I 
CQd for a few more minutes with no callers and then quickly tuned around 
to find everyone else was very weak with hardly anyone showing an S 
meter reading. On to 15M and straight away I found an IS0 at 9+, I then 
found a quiet freq and started to run, which lasted all of 10 QSOs. So I 
switched between 20, 15 and 10 trying to build up a good base of mults 
but hardly anyone could hear me. My IC7000's S-meter reads the same as 
my FTDX5K from S5-S9 and when not one of the JAs registered a signal 
strength reading you know something isn't quite right. When no one can 
hear you on the higher bands the next best thing to running JAs in the 
IOTA contest (as I am not on the mainland) is to run G*s on 40M. Would 
you believe it WOW what a difference, at one point I had the biggest 
pileup ever, which consisted of mostly G*s. When it thinned out a little 
and I could hear the chuckling idiot trying to QRM me, all I had was 
comments about how strong the signal was. The antenna was intentionally 
a cloud warmer fed at 10M/33ft with the ends only 5M/16ft high, although 
that didn't stop 3 VKs and a couple of PYs calling in later on in the 
contest. I went to bed just after midnight UTC but was awoken again at 
around 4am local by the cockerels.

I got back on at around 0700utc but after having a hard time working a 
VK on 20M I went to check the 10/15/20 antenna and I popped it on the 
analyser. It looked pretty good, so I had breakfast and got back on 20M. 
With just 3-1/2 hours to go an Italian called me to say I had terrible 
RF feedback problems and he could hardly understand what I was saying. 
It was my home made mic adapater which I'd only ever used with 100W, but 
adding a couple of ferrite chokes cleared up the problem. Its a shame I 
found this out after 8-1/2 hours of struggling but I'm not sure if this 
problem was there at the start of the contest but fortunately it only 
affected 10, 15 and 20M.

Looking through the log it looks awful with gaps of up to 17mins between 
QSOs, but in the end I wasn't that far off last year's stay at home 
effort so I'm quite pleased with the end result. I'll probably do the 
same next year but will book the QTH early.

I now envy those able to live in the countryside, the noise level on the 
40/80M dipoles was S-zero, and that was with the pre-amp switched on. 
using those antennas here at home the noise is S9 on 80M and S7 on 40M. 
I think the low 40M noise level really helped me out when working G* 
stations as there were quite a few that were S-zero, which is something 
to note for next year.


73 Darren G0TSM / M7X