IOTA Contest
Call: EJ0GI
Operator(s): EI3DY, EI7HT, EI9FHB, EI9JF, GI0PCU, GI0RTN, GI3MMF, GI8SKN
Station: EJ0GI
Class: Multi-Op HP
QTH: EU-006 (Inis Oirr)
Operating Time (hrs): 24
Summary:
Band CW Qs CW Mults Ph Qs Ph Mults
----------------------------------------
80: 92 35 68 31
40: 429 70 272 43
20: 589 64 142 52
15: 118 32 163 36
10: 108 16 144 16
----------------------------------------
Total: 1336 217 794 178 Total Score = 5,709,690
Club:
Comments:
2x FT920 plus amp.
Antennas:
Full size vertical for 80m
Dipole for 80m
2 ele vertical array for 40m
4-square array for 20m
2 ele monobander for 15m at 12m agl
2 ele monobander for 10m at 12m agl
The EJ0GI oepration is in the DXpedition class. All equipment is taken on and
off the island by ferry, and as the Inis Oirr ferry is not a car ferry, we have
to load everything on off the boat ourselves. There's no convenient
roll-on-roll-off ferry service for us! This makes keeping weight down
absolutely vital.
For the 5th year in a row, a combined team from the South Dublin Radio Club and
City of Belfast Radio Amateur Society travelled to Inis Oirr (population 280),
on the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland, for the IOTA contest. Due
to time constraints for several operators, we arrived on the island on the
Wednesday evening boat and left on the Monday afternoon boat, rather than
spending our habitual week on the island, which limited peri-contest activity.
Our score is 40% higher than our previous record. Doubtless, this was helped
by considerable Sporadic E, but we are still chuffed. Every year we get a
little bit better. This year we didn't really work any more QSOs than last
year, but we did work *better* QSOs - more 15 pointers and vastly more
multipliers. We still do not seem to be loud enough to generate or maintain
real pileups on SSB, but CQ + CW = instant pileup in this contest for much of
the time. The trick is to handle the sometimes frenzied packet pileups without
letting rate collapse.
For all the E layer was hopping, the F layer was in odd shape with great
conditions on 20 and 40 on Sunday morning, but the bands feeling in very poor
shape late on Saturday evening.
We suffered significant problems with internet connection throughout the
contest. Inis Oirr is on satellite broadband but this struggled for much of
Saturday evening and into the wee hours of Sunday morning. We also suffered
from networking problems in the latter stage of the contest. Our run station
log started collapsing on us at 2-5 minute intervals after about 1000Z. At
least the mult station log was working OK, but several times we had to run away
from pileups abruptly while we sorted the chaos out. Apologies for that. For
the last 75 minutes of the contest, we logged on paper on the run station!
The whole island also suffered a three hour power cut on Thursday which shook
us all a little and would have landed us in deep trouble had it happened during
the contest.
Here's the band by band summary:
80m - usually a stellar performer with our big vertical, 80 was poor this year.
High levels of static throughout and a fair bit of ionospheric distortion later
in the night made signals difficult to copy, while there seemed to be a sort of
proto-skip zone later in the night, making G/EI signals weak, runs primarily
into central and eastern Europe and limiting our number of 15 pointers. This
is a real problem as 80 SSB is usually the bread and butter band for working
those vital 15 pointers into Britain.
40m - on the other hand 40 was often superb, and GI0PCU's reconstruction of our
vertical array seems to have paid real dividends. Long path signals from the
South Pacific boomed in at our sunrise, adding some valuable mults. QSOs deep
into both the USA and Asia were commonplace, especially on CW. 9M6 called us
for a great mult on SSB. We had lots of fun on 40.
20m - a bit of a curate's egg. We were tickled to work Hawai'i on both CW and
SSB, not something we do every year, along with some great west coast, African
and Caribbean mults. Short skip ensured many 15 point Gs called in. Runs into
central and eastern Europe on CW were instantaneous and never ending. On the
other hand, despite reorienting our 4-square specifically to work JA, our
habitual sunset pipeline to Japan never appeared. A JA8 called us in the first
hour of the contest, giving us hope that we were going to be in 15 point heaven
come 2030Z, but it just never happened. It felt like prime time for this
opening coincided with the worst of conditions. This was a big loss.
15m - great Sporadic E into Europe, and some good transatlantic propagation
early on Saturday evening (presumably multi-hop Es) made this band great fun
for periods. Sporadic E even tightened as close as Central England, netting us
plenty of 15 pointers, but the YBs and 9Ms we normally hear - if not always work
through the Eu wall - were absent.
10m - boy, this was fun. We worked stations as nearby as London and Paris on
Es. On Sunday morning, the signals from Germany and the Czech Republic were
S9+++, absolutely pure with no flutter or fading for about an hour. It brought
back happy memories of sunspot maximum! No real DX, but when the band opened
rates were excellent and provided lots of enjoyment.
Why do we like the IOTA Contest so much? Well, on Sunday evening after the
contest finished, we were sitting outside Ned's pub on a balmy night, with a
few cold beers and the most perfect sunset imaginable over Galway Bay. Bill
GI3MMF commented that all over Europe and beyond, there were other groups of
radio hams enjoying the same sunset. The great thing about the IOTA Contest is
that it encourages us to go and sample our often unique and vulnerable island
cultures at a time of the year when, at least in northern Europe, the weather
is at its best.
While all our team muck in and work hard at the things they do best, we would
be completely lost without our antenna guru and site foreman, GI0PCU. Thanks,
Alan.
We also enjoy superb hospitality from the people of Inis Oirr every year, with
a warm welcome for these crazy radio hams. In particular, we need to thank the
authorities at Inis Oirr's three room school for allowing us the use of such a
convenient and accessible QTH every year, with power and internet on tap. Go
raibh mÃle maith agat.
Well, that's that for 2008. See you all next year. Is it too much to hope
that we'll have some sunspots to accompany IOTA 2009?
73
Gerry GI0RTN
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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