Mon 18 December, 2006

Welcome.

2E1GUA: First time with the callsign on HF.

2E1OIC: First contest and had a great time. Roll on 2004 The XYL will call and I will log next year. Found SDI to be an excellent program. Everyone with whom I made contact was very correct A big thank you to all behind the scenes after the contest ends.

4S7NI: Wanted to enter 4S7 in contest logbooks, marginal success with low power, dipole antenna & dead band.

9A/OK2SG: My first island operation - very nice.

9A2GA: Again QRV this year but propagation wasn't so good.

9A6C/P: Contest was great fun, unfortunately I woke with a terrible headache after Sunday morning nap and was mostly useless. I think next year will generate some strategy to make a better score.

9V1RH: Propagation from SEA very much down from last year. Lost last 1½ hours due to heavy electrical storm. Lost utility power.

AA4V/P: We started with heavy rain and lightning from a tropical depression....conditions were marginal but we were pleased that we had a bit of an opening on 15 ...conditions gradually went away until there was not much left to work that we could hear...QRN from storms.

BRS91529: May I say how much I enjoyed the contest this year. It was good fun to 'bag' all those island stations and spend the weekend 'playing radio'. My only regret was the total loss of 28 MHz on my rig! Anyway as I was top SWL last year, I put aside my problems with the lack of 10 metres and defended my honour.

BV2B/BV9W: Very bad propogation and two hours thunderstorm made frustrated.

C6ASB: Fun to be on the "DX" side for a change!

CS4B: Bugio Island: even without water and power (this is the real DXpedition) is one of the most beautiful places in the world. Please create an SSB multi-op class.

CS5C: We did it again! The Corvo team CU9D+ three new members set up the IOTA contest stations on Culatra Island. Our special thanks to the Associação de Nossa Senhora dos Navegantes for giving us permission to use the kindergarten premises. Our apologies to anyone who lost contact with us. We suffered failures with our multiplier transceiver, computer link, antenna filter and a linear amplifier.

DE0MBS: It was my first IOTA-contest. Perhaps the value of islands is too big with being multipliers plus the 15 points. I guess that will make it fun for most G-Stations. But on the other hand there is no difference between for example a DL- and a W-QSO on 80m. For SWLs it is a problem that many running stations don't correct a callsign on the air they got wrong at the first instance. So for example I had to log DF1IAQ as heard from a running G-Station. I never heard a correction as he confirmed the report of the DL-station which by my guess could have been DL1IAQ who is an active contester. And I'm quite sure the G-Station has typed the correction in the computer log. But that's life and I enjoyed the time just listening (on other occasions I'm QRV as DL8MBS). I used no other means like packet or cluster etc. For me it takes a lot of the personal challenge from contesting - especially in listening ability. But that's a voice from the dark past: I restarted amateur radio after nearly 20 years break, so for me it's the comparison between two different worlds and not a development I would have experienced step by step. Thanks for the contest and the work.

DK5ZX: Not so good conditions on the second day I think.

DL0HGW/P: Bad HF condx, but see you next year again!

DL4HBA: Thanks for the great Contest!! There were many DX-Stations I could work.

DL4MCF: Bad condx on 15m and 10m made it impossible to reach my score from 2001. TNX for great activity from all the islands, especially from UK.

DL5AWI: The fun was great this year also. On second day the condx not good here. Hope to hear all again next year!

DL7VWH: Tnx to all stations who heard my QRP.

DP1POL: I was really very much looking forward to IOTA Contest, but very poor conditions due to geomagnetic activity meant that every QSO was very hard work. Now, I am hoping for better conditions and warmer weather during IOTA Contest 2004 when I will once again operate from Helgoland Island (EU-127) in the North Sea.

EA6AZ: No time to participate in the contest. Next year will be better.

EI7IQ: I attach this years entry for the IOTA Contest. A few comments: I enjoyed the contest as usual. I felt that conditions were only average. The policy of powerful stations holding a frequency by mechanically (or electronically) repeatedly calling CQ, without having any listening facilities is to be condemned. This happened on a few bands. Obviously team members were unavailable for whatever reason to operate on the given band/frequency at the time, but the team decided to squat the frequency anyway by calling CQ without leaving a gap. Disgraceful! I wish to thank all involved in the contest for its organisation - a great job is one from start to finish. I am looking forward to next year's event already.

ES0MC: First contest with my new (for summer QTH) callsign ES0MC - but perhaps ES5MC/0 would have been more attractive... (?) Still, did a bit better than in 2002. :) CU next time!

ES1QD: 73! to all IOTA friends. This year at home but 2004 on some of the Estonian island.

ES4MM: Here very poor condx! Tnx all fer nice QSOs. 73 . Hpe cul next year!

F/ON5MF/P: First time in the low power exp. class with only verticals (10-15-20-40) + a low dipole for 80m. This expedition was planned in only 1½ weeks! We had great fun but it was a pity that the conditions during the contest were not half as good as the evening before...

F5VHQ: Could not make it to one of the French islands. Great opportunity to test new homebrew portable ant. CU next year - definitely from an island...

G0AJH: Very enjoyable as usual. Please make stations give their call more often. Very tiresome to wait 3 mins only to find you have already worked a station! No 10m activity so worked more 40m this year. The 12-hour format is great. It allows you to fit in shopping, meals and sleep! Looking forward to 2004!

G0DIZ: Many stations failed to identify every contact, had they done so I could have quadrupled my score

G0MRH: Found this contest to be hard work because of the propagation conditions which were poor and my limited station. 80 Watts into a doublet at about 16ft is a test on its own.

G0MTN: After last years experience, this year I managed my best ever score / mult total from my 7 attempts at this category. The trick it seems is NOT TO RUN! The rate meter is *not* your friend. 3pt QSOs are not worth the time - as a single Op (SO1R) chasing 15pt IOTAs and getting new mults leads to a better overall score. A respectable SO2R station would blow away any SO1R entry - in effect allowing run and mult search just like the multi-ops - allowing huge scores to be reached. Good contest though, if stressful :-) A thinking man's event. Bad conditions on Sunday - I did a few band trawls for mults, but carried on waiting for an improvement in propagation that just never appeared!

G2AFV: Usual severe key clicks from EU. Condx abysmal on 10 and 15m

G2HLU: Conditions not as good as 2002; 10m useless to me, 15m poor, 40m disappointing, 20m most useful band

G3GLL: Conditions not good on HF bands. Plenty of activity though. I intended to enter the 12hr section but went a little awry with my times!

G3GMM: Generally good contest all round, with all bands open during Sunday morning.

G3JJZ: Wow, what conditions! I thought VHF was slow enough!

G3KKQ: Rig K2 @ 5W. Ant 50M Loop. & R3 Vert. Poor Condx Nil hrd on 10m .15m no DX heard. GB90RSGB: Lost many dozen - maybe 100s - of QSOs due to nature of the callsign. Only very very rarely did any station copy it correctly first time. A big problem was the other GB90RSGB/* stations (where * = RSGB District number): many stns refused to work me saying I was dupe.

G3LHJ: Great contest as always but harder going this year with the poorer condx especially on 15/10m only "1" QSO on 10m.

G3OOK: Generally poor propagation. Virtually nothing on 10m. Slept in on Sunday morning which didn't help any!

G3RSD: First time have entered mixed mode. Interesting!!

G3SAD: Conditions poor on most bands with 10 a waste of time and 15 almost as bad.

G3TXF: Used WriteLog for the first time. I hope the Cabrillo format is OK. I have tried to make the "Categories" correspond. Thanks for adding an Assisted section to the IOTA Contest. Pity that conditions were abysmal for much of the Contest.

G3UFY: Prior engagement meant I missed the afternoon & early evening. Conditions not wonderful either

G3YMC: My first attempt at this contest now there is a QRP section. Conditions seemed pretty poor and it was certainly hard going. I was particularly disappointed in the post dawn period - 80m was noisy, 20m and higher were dead, so everybody was packed into 40m! 170 QSOs in 12 hours is decidedly a low score, perhaps I chose the wrong hours for my session...

G3ZRJ: Glad to give a few points away despite having a very nasty virus which meant heading either for bed or the loo after a few mins operating. Better luck next year I hope

G4BGW: Condx quite poor - could hear some NA stations but great difficulty working them - maybe the R7 doesn't like heavy rain! Great contest as usual.

G4DDL: Mainly EUs worked condx poor. Best score ever though and with only 25 W to a LW.

G4FAL: First IOTA contest. Contest exchange difficult in CW so stayed on SSB mostly.

G4FOX/P: FT1000mp @ 400 watts TH5 for 20/15/10 & dipoles 80/40 Very enjoyable weekend apart from lack of sleep and assistance. The Bar-B-Q was excellent thanks to the ladies!

G4IFB: This was my first proper contest entry from home in several years, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Despite the lack of a linear, I still had plenty of interest for EU005. IOTA is clearly one of the major worldwide events. Maybe next year I'll venture somewhere more exotic if I can find an island to myself!

G4JFS: Hi folks, Well, here it is. Pretty impressive I'm sure you'll agree - all 13 QSOs of it :) Needless to say, it's really a check log. I was selfish this year; I was out to get some new ones, interesting ones, and give some friends a few points. I shouldn't grumble, after all I did get two new ones. However, looking at the list of who was planning to be on, I expected more. Maybe those operations just didn't happen or maybe their operating hours didn't coincide with mine but some of them just didn't get a mention on the reflector (I was hoping for a valid NA-140 but W3TBG only got 2 mentions on the reflector). I did hear one or two other new ones but they were too weak for me to work. Sunday morning was disappointing; only VP2MX from the Caribbean on 7MHz (weak and with a big pile up) and a noisy 14MHz. Despite all these disappointments, I'm looking forward to the next one! Good luck with all the checking and thanks for organising the event.

G5XV: Band conditions well down on last year, particularly noticeable was the significant drop in QSOs on 15 metres.

G6PZ: Working two GB90RSGB stations on same weekend! Everyone too 'worse for wear' to do night shift!

GI3XRQ/P: Conditions seemed down compared to last year though still a lot of fun.

GM0FGI: 10m almost useless, 15m disappeared on Sunday also. Needed a better antenna on 40 and 80m to make improved scores on these bands. With low power (relative to big guns) difficult to get runs going. Spent most time searching out island stations. Habit of many stations not to give calls signs wasted much time. First attempt at full 24 hours. With better 80m antenna would have kept going later into evening/morning. Enjoyable contest. Would be useful if islands with low/no resident amateur population had higher bonus to encourage more island searching by big guns.

GM2T: We all enjoyed the contest once again from the Island of Tiree. The Bands were certainly not the best and it was very hard work during the "wee" small hours. Nearly lost an aerial through the cows thinking it was somewhere they could scratch their backs! Lastly as always the hospitality shown by the people of Tiree was second to none, a very good reason for returning each year.

GM3CFS: Plenty of activity, but little from Africa or South America. Conditions very poor on 21MHz and on Sunday practically dead and 28MHz pretty useless most of the time.

GM3PPG/P: Enjoyed annual trip to Outer Hebrides. Tried new vert beam on 20m but still only a few JA on 20/15.10m only opened to Eu and S. Am on Sat pm. Aurora affected HF bands? 4 squares gd on LF bands but low activity from Caribbean es N.Am. Mni tnx to all who called and RSGB/HFCC bods!

GM4EMX: Where was the DX? - Like pulling hens teeth! Target was to work 400 + so not a happy bunny Hi.

GM4SID: Pity that 28 MHz was dead. Reduced total this year mainly because of it.

GM4V: This was the first attempt at IOTA by the Forth Valley Contest Group (FVCG). Although we are a new group, most of us knew one another already and three of us were part of last year's leading UK IOTA effort at GM5A. Planning for our trip started in February and it certainly came good when we saw the church hall we had rented for 4 nights (Thursday to Monday). We had ample space for all our gear and beds as well as a large kitchen, a bar (which we stocked!), a fridge freezer, a BT phone point and good "washroom" facilities. Outside we were equally well catered for with a large car park and fields almost all around which we had been told we could use! All antennas were erected with no major problems, other than the tower briefly jamming, and occasional re-organisation of the wire radials on our 40m vertical being required each time the local sheep wandered past. The rest of our gear was, for a change, set up at a fairly leisurely pace with no real headaches to resolve. We even had time to carry out RFI tests on the radio-microphone system used in the adjacent church. A few strategically placed ferrites resolved the single small problem we found. However, the priest indicated that if anything was heard through his speaker system it may liven up his sermon! Having once more evaluated several software packages before the contest we decided to use NA again. Although NA is not perfect we knew from past IOTA experience how to work around its minor deficiencies. WriteLog tests on the bench and during CQWW had highlighted the serial number and mult window problems which we now see other stations had! Sticking with NA proved to be a good choice as it worked almost flawlessly throughout. Only two minor problems occurred during the contest and only one of these was attributed to NA! Much praise is however due to Robert MM0ANT for ensuring that we had our first RF problem free NA network. This was a big bonus! DX Cluster access was a bigger challenge. We had access to a BT phone socket and had also taken equipment to allow us access using GPRS on a mobile phone. Sadly, due to weak mobile phone signals, the GPRS option had to be abandoned. While this wasn't too much of a problem it meant that we ended up struggling with RF on the phone line whenever we used 40m. This kept interrupting our internet connection and undoubtedly lost us some mults, particularly when you consider the higher than usual amount of time spent on LF as a result of poor HF band conditions. As with G4MJS at MD4K we consider Mult Hunting to be very important and as a multi-op entry our mult station is constantly doing just that. Even our Run Station joins in by passing new ones to other bands for the Mult Station to pick off. As has often been said of IOTA "The Mult is king!" and anyone who ignores that fact will crash and burn in the results table! Returning to the subject of conditions, although we found a little activity on 10m at the start this soon disappeared and we found ourselves moving down the bands towards LF in an attempt to find decent QSO rates. Particularly on Sunday this presented the dilemma of whether to stay LF and get reasonable numbers of 15pt QSOs with UK stations or move back HF and try to get some mults but with a lower rate! We decide to take the LF option for most of Sunday to benefit from the influx of UK Full and Intermediate Class B licensees who had just gained HF access. We therefore relied on our Mult station to boost the score on 20m and above during that period. As a result we only had 110 QSOs on 20m and above on Sunday, most of these being on 20m. Was it a good move? We think so but all will become apparent when everyone elses scores are known! On the subject of the new HF access for UK Full and Intermediate Class B licensees, it was noticeable how good the general operating practice of these stations was. It is very refreshing to come across this and is surely promising for the future of UK HF contesting. Well done to those concerned! Now a few less encouraging points..... The welcome and help which we received from the locals was superb. We would love to go back again but surely it is more sensible heading south since our score has now suffered due to auroral effects for the last two years (GM5A 2002 and GM4V 2003). Watch this space!!!

GM5C: Excellent day apart from rig blowing up!

GM7X: Poor conditions -- I blame this for my score being lower than last year! Less activity, but maybe this was just the conditions.

GN0ADX/P: We had a great time this was our fifth consecutive year at Rathlin Island. Weather was also good!

GX6YB: The Bristol Contest Group were back in the Isle of Wight this year after two years away in PJ2. Unfortunately we were soon reminded why we had decided to go to the Caribbean - English climate! The weather was the lowlight of what was otherwise a great weekend. One operating tent was completely destroyed by a storm we had on Thursday. The high wind and driving rain returned on Saturday about two hours into the contest. Luckily the mobile towers and antennas survived, though we hadn't risked cranking them right up. The highlights were good food, drink and a great team. There were no problems with the radios, which seemed to be putting out a very good signal on all bands. Unfortunately, our PC network didn't go quite so well. WriteLog showed its resilience to network ups and downs (due to RF), and didn't lose any QSOs - as far as we know. However, the already strange serial number allocation of WriteLog was completely confused. Our apologies to other stations and the adjudicators for non-serial, duplicate and missing serial numbers. We're confident though that the numbers in the log are what we gave on the air. Sadly, we got our tactics a bit wrong (e.g. too little time running on 40m) and have finished with a low points per QSO ratio. One of many things to fix next year. Conditions were generally poor, with 10m was virtually unusable. 15m and 20m were good for Europe, but poor for DX. 40m was quite good for DX, and Antarctica was a surprise on 80m. Overall an enjoyable contest, though we came away with the feeling that we could have done better. The competition raises its game every year as this contest establishes itself as THE big contest of the summer months.

H2G (5B4AGC): Awful conditions on 10m resulted in a very low mult

HA1DAE: After few years back again in the contest and, I am very happy. My station only FT902DM PWR 100W Ant: 80m Inv V. array, 40m: sloping dipole to South America, other bands: this antennas with homemade antenna tuner. Thank you very much for every body who QSOed with me. Thank you very much for EI5DI his very good software. Easy to use.

HB9CQS: Dear IOTA friends, My usual SWISSLOG does not support Cabrillo, so I downloaded GenLog and used it for the first time during the IOTA contest. I sincerely hope that the enclosed files are in order. I went for quality in stead of quantity and in spite of lousy conditions managed to work 5 or 6 new island groups. Noticed quite a few contest stations working above 14300kHz.

I2AZ/1: Not very good conditions especially on higher bands. On 10 meter 0 QSO!! Hope next year to be better.

I2WIJ: Yet another crazy IOTA operation from home! I like this contest, so I had fun, even if I definitely prefer to operate from an Island!

IC8WIC: No conditions this year to Asia and West Coast Always the great fun.

IK0HIT: Thanks for another good one. Poor propagation - but dedicated participants.

IK2RPE: Non-existent propagation on High Bands

IN3ASW: Did twice the points than last year, although propagation was really bad.

IV3DYS: This is my first IOTA-Test it is very good and interesting Test ... Ciao & 73's. CU in the next IOTA-Test!

IZ0EHL/0: Not very good antenna in my country house. I am happy for some new one islands for my IOTA award. TNX and I hope best in the next.

IZ1ANZ: Only to honour the IOTA Contest my first experience

IZ7AUH/P: Many problem electrical generator was off....

IZ8EDL: Little time for the contest, hopefully next year.

JA1BPA: I participated in this contest for the first time in my 30-year ham career. It was a lot of fun although the conditions were not good and I had to work on Sunday morning. It is good that you have 12-hour category.

JA1YPA: Not good condition this year at contest.

JF2SKV: I enjoyed the contest and QSOs with excellent operators. Thanks! Must improve my antenna and skill for next year. Thanks to all for contacts!

JG1VGX: Condx were bad!!

Soapbox - Continued