[UK-CONTEST] IOTA CONTEST - G5W

[Don Beattie]

Difficult to compare this year with last, because of the scoring change, but it seemed busier to me. Our QSO count was up by about 15%, as was the mult count and boredom never set in !

Conditions seemed fairly benign, with 20m open all night and good 80m conditions with little summer static. Marios, 5B4WN/G0WWW and I did a two-man MS entry, with little forward planning of strategy. In the end we just ran on the run station and mult chased on the mult (original !). 15m carried a large slug of the volume.

Nice to hear 10m offering some good runs, although the rate was lower then 15/20 so we tended not to run on 10 that much. Some big scores from the usual peripatetic G stations, particularly those benefiting from a "unique" island, rather than boring EU-005. We still have some way to go here to keep up with those rates.

Tuning over the bands showed what a global contest this has now become, with most of the usable segments being full of contest activity. 

The usual last minute panics here, including a failed rotator two hours before the contest started. This was traced to water ingress in the repeater at the foot of the tower, despite the unit being in a IP65 enclosure, inside another. I have yet to find the reason. Anyway, the water had caused the fuse to blow in the box which once changed (and the box dried out) resolved matters for now. Strangely, the 80m dipole also went high-SWR part way through. An initial look-see does not suggest an obvious fault, so I suspect the balun or a switching transistor driving the relay box. 

A really enjoyable 24 hours, as ever.

I had (and still have) reservations about the six band/mode changes per hour per station rule. As suspected, it really began to bite in the second part of the contest, with the relative scarcity of new mults and the tendency of many stations to band hop regularly as the contest draws to a close. Chasing the mults with one hand tied behind your back is a pain. I understand why the rule has been changed, but I personally feel it may have gone a bit too far, particularly in counting mode changes. It is hard to predict when stations will change mode, whereas I do accept that predicting propagation (ie which band to use) is probably OK. If the restriction on changes is to remain, I would like to see the mode aspect removed, and just have the limit on band changes.  


For the record, here's the raw scores, prior to checking:

 BAND  SSB/IOTA   CW/IOTA  POINTS   AVG 
----------------------------------------
   80   52   33  106   60    1735 10.98 
   40  212   68  216   78    3710  8.67 
   20  568  119  407  111    7480  7.67 
   15  619   97  427   77    7495  7.17 
   10   77   28   64   31    1320  9.36 
----------------------------------------
TOTAL 1528  345 1220  357   21740  7.91 
========================================
       TOTAL SCORE : 15 261 480

Thanks for all the QSOs.

73

Don, G3BJ