[UK-CONTEST] G4PIQ IOTA Report

[Andy Cook, G4PIQ]

 BAND  SSB/IOTA   CW/IOTA  POINTS   AVG 

----------------------------------------

   80   38   23  116   30    1350  8.77 

   40   43   24  132   37    1555  8.89 

   20   71   30  108   14    1415  7.91 

   15   29   19   68   10     795  8.20 

   10   20   15   11    9     415 13.39 

----------------------------------------

TOTAL  201  111  435  100    5530  8.69 

========================================

        TOTAL SCORE : 1 166 830

 

K3 + K2

80/40/20m Dipole nest @ 18m

40/20/10m Dipole next @ 12m

 

Because work involves a small event happening right now in London, my spare
time for contesting has been even more constrained than usual. However, this
weekend, while the family went off to see the Swimming in London, if
everything stayed calm at work, I expected to have a bit of free time and
decided to see what could be done from home with just wire dipoles and low
power in the 12 hour section. 

 

The only problem was that I didn't have any antennas up or the station
together on Saturday morning, but I figured I could get all that built by
1300, Unfortunately I was wrong! Antennas planned were two nests of 3
dipoles, one for 80/40/20 at about 60ft hanging from a (very bristly)
Sequoia tree, and another for 40/20/10 on a 40ft pole mast. There's a long
and sorry tale of all the usual frustrations with wires getting twisted and
snarled up in the trees more times than I care to think about, applying the
measure once (wrongly), cut six times rule so all 3 dipoles in the nest were
15% too short, a mast coupler lost somewhere in the grass but gaffer tape
seemed to work OK as a substitute etc. Eventually got both the antennas up
although the lower one still had only 50m of RG58 as a feeder and went to
put the station together. 

 

Amongst other things I found that my high quality boom mic was left at the
contest site after GO2HQ. Since my 'high quality' mic is actually a 50p
electret insert and I happened to have an old one with a slight intermittent
kicking about, a combination of the old one, insulation tape, cable ties and
some 10sq mm earth wire as a flexible boom sorted that problem.

 

I eventually got on the air at 1650 but had missed some of the openings on
10/15 I'd hoped for, so my operating times are not what you would have
planned. Took some off time during the early evening to do family stuff and
fix some RF feedback issues with the K2, and by the time I got back on the
HF bands were sounding pretty poor. I operated through the night to about
0345 mostly on the 40/80, spending a lot of time doing S&P and picking off
15 pointers. Then another 3.5 hours on Sunday morning. 

 

Like Stuart, GM4AFF / GM3F I noted a lot of stations not ID-ing regularly.
It's just a sign of 2nd rate operating. Thankfully we also had an IOTA
reference to look for this time. If I needed the multiplier I knew I needed
to work them anyhow. If they weren't sending an IOTA reference or ID-ing, I
tuned straight past.

 

So - I had great fun with a very basic station. Two radios, no bandpass
filters (and no cross band interference at all), no amps, a homebrew basic
relay and transistor based SO2R box driven by the LPT port on Win-Test and
15-20dB below the big guns from the look of RBN. But treating it just like a
full-bore contest and using SO2R keeps it interesting and engaging. To me
this also shows how accessible SO2R really is and I'd encourage people to
give it a go. 

 

73,

 

Andy, G4PIQ