Category Archives: IOTA

G6UW Member on Gough Island in 1955

In 1955, Martin Holdgate (now Sir Martin) then a recent Cambridge graduate organised a scientific expedition to Gough Island in the middle of the South Atlantic. He asked CUWS if a member would be interested in joining as the radio operator and electronics technician. Philip Mullock, G3HPM, stepped up and by late that year was active as ZD9AD from Gough Island. Thanks to Paul Johnson, ZS1S, one of Philip’s QSL cards has been scanned and sent to us as a memento of the expedition. Holdgate’s book “Mountains of the Sea” has more detail about the trip and includes a recollection that Philip kept a regular radio sked trying to contact an old school friend in the UK – entirely without success throughout the expedition.

Holdgate also commented on the nature of the typical amateur radio contacts as per the book image below:

QSL card sent to ZS1AB in Cape Town:

Philip retired to the Cambridge area and visited the current G6UW shack about 7 years ago (pictured) but sadly passed away recently.

 

 

GP6UW: IOTA contest from Guernsey

GP6UW certificate

William Eustace M0WJE and Dan McGraw M0WUT entered the 2018 RSGB IOTA Contest from Guernsey. This was no cushy operation, however; the excitement began with the journey from the South Coast, made in a 24′ sailing yacht Aphrodite.

I had brought the boat to Poole to allow a better slant on the anticipated SW winds; Dan and the non-radio operator (but keen sailor) Hugo Cheema-Grubb appeared on the quayside at varying times on the evening of 25 July, and all hands turned in—after figuring out how to stow themselves, a tent, a trestle table, two radios, four or five SOTA poles, power supplies, laptops, camping stools, Morse keys and all the other equipment required for a multi-two station in a very small space!

View of Old Harry Rocks, from the outbound Channel crossing.

Under sail off Old Harry Rocks at sunrise, shortly after leaving Poole.

We slipped lines at 0330 and found ourselves off Old Harry Rocks by dawn. The crossing was in beautiful weather but much of it with remarkably little wind, so the deafening roar of the 4hp 2 stroke outboard featured for some hours, and those sitting in the cockpit donned their ear defenders. That evening, Aphrodite arrived at Braye, Alderney—thanks to a tidal miscalculation, just after sunset. After a leisurely breakfast the next morning, the tide was just turning in “the Swinge”, the mildly terrifying gap between Alderney and the off-lying islets, as we set sail once again. The wind was more obliging today, though predictably on the nose, and, helped by the notoriously rapid Channel Islands tides, we reached Guernsey largely under sail.

Beaucette Marina’s boatyard was the operating location chosen, and, when the skipper had recovered from the excitement of the very narrow entrance, the QTH was surveyed: a majestic spot on the cliffs of Guernsey, looking out towards Herm and Alderney. The take-off to Europe was undeniably good, and proximity to salt water combined with ample space for antennas and the operating tent appeared promising. The weather forecast for the contest weekend, with winds  frequently up to gale force and the occasional bit of heavy rain on Sunday, filled us with less enthusiasm—though at least it assured us that the conditions would not risk our feeling unadventurous.

Starting at 0700 on contest day 1, Saturday 28th, we began pushing the gear in trolleys up the steep pontoon ramp and then heaving it up the mud bank onto the cliff. This seemed minimal in difficulty then; by the next morning it was to assume quite a different complexion. The tent was erected in the rising winds, and well guyed; with the help of Paul GU4YBW and Adam MU0WLV, we raised our 20m and 15m antennas, set up the trestle table and equipment within the tent, and, at 1300 (the start of the contest) were [almost!] ready to begin operating.

At the start of the contest exactly, Dan, the CW op, began sending the first of many “CQ TEST”s; as the SSB op, I tried to ensure that the frequency and mode were logged correctly (attempts to get the FT890 to speak to DXLog had failed), then began bellowing into the aether, with spectacularly little result. The “statistics” window grew progressively more depressing from my side, as the CW QSO count mounted rapidly in the marginal conditions. After some time, the SSB rate needle lethargically levered itself away from the stop, but not by much. Dan meanwhile was running at a fine rate, occasionally clasping his hands over his earphones in an attempt to resolve an indistinct number or callsign—and perhaps in the hope of reducing the audio frequency power output of his fellow contester across the tent. Hugo had spent the day exploring the island, and helpfully provided a much-needed and delightful dinner. We abandoned the cliffs for an hour or so to eat, washing down the food with the local Roquette cider that Adam (MU0WLV) had thoughtfully delivered as “contest juice”—or Roquette fuel, as he termed it! Dan, complaining that there were “lots of dots and dashes going round and round in my head, and they all hurt”, made the sensible decisions to retire until 0600 the next morning, given the entry appeared to stand little chance of being competitive; I, being more foolhardy, returned to my three-legged stool and continued shouting into the void. Special thanks to the cheering QSOs with Bernie, W3UR, who worked us on SSB on a couple of band slots—the latter at roughly 0400 LT, in which he presciently asked how the tent was coping with the gale force winds. As it banged, flapped and slatted around my ears, I assured him all was well; as the sun began to stain the sky I made a foray outside to re-erect a partly collapsed antenna, but was pleased to note there were no other casualties. Despite running for at least six hours more, conditions (between local QRM from boat battery chargers, QRN, and generally poor propagation) were hard and 100W of voice went nowhere—I was now, finally, creeping up on Dan’s QSO count from the previous day. At about 0430 it began to rain outside, which presented little bother; unfortunately by 0530 it had begun to rain inside the tent as well, and operating became somewhat more challenging. By 0555 the situation had worsened to the point of being hazardous, and, covering all the equipment with oilskins, I QRX-d just as Dan arrived for the morning shift. Fetching more oilskins and packing away the most valuable equipment, operating resumed for a time, now on one rig only; I was pleased to note that Dan grimaced at the conditions on SSB, suggesting it wasn’t only my inadequacy causing such a pathetic rate, and, as the leaks intensified and a lake on the groundsheet developed alarmingly close to the mains wiring, we decided to go QRT for the contest (at risk of going QRT for good!), on 742 QSOs, mostly on 40, 20, and 15m, with a few on 80m—though I had not bothered to erect the 80m dipole, the FT890’s tuner was quite able to cope with the 40m vertical on 80m, though of course the antenna was doubtless rather inefficient.

M0WUT operating under a tarpaulin in the leaking tent

As the rain poured into the tent, equipment was covered with oilskins and we scaled back to one SSB station.

What, one might ask, of the other crew? Hugo had intended to explore the island that morning. A first hand account from Dan reveals that he rolled over at 0600, silenced his alarm, heard the rain on the cabin roof, remarked “No” and went back to sleep! All hands were soon rallied, though, and the equipment was vacated first to the (mercifully dry) campsite laundry room, then to the boat. After a refreshing few hundred yards’ stroll to admire a cliff fort and pass the time to 0900, we repaired to the restaurant, which had just opened, and had a well-earned Full English breakfast; that evening, the rain having abated, we were treated to a tour of a few of Guernsey’s highlights as unearthed by Hugo’s exploration, before patronising an excellent curry house in St Sampson—virtually the only restaurant in the area open on a Sunday evening.

The accursed tent was stowed in the marina skip, and we set off for Alderney. From here, passage back to the UK was smooth and thankfully uneventful, though crossing the shipping lanes mid-Channel—likened by one watcher of an online AIS display to crawling across the M25—proved entertaining as always. I dozed down below for a while, and in my absence a log entry reports “Playing Frogger with container ships.” We dropped anchor off Sandown, Isle of Wight at 0330 on 1 August, and pottered into Aphrodite‘s home port in Chichester Harbour later that morning, after some much needed sleep!

Rigs were a Yaesu FT890 (kindly loaned by G3ZAY), and Dan’s Elecraft K3, used with paddle and Winkeyer.

Photo of the crew exploring Alderney.

The crew had an afternoon ashore in Alderney to walk round some of the island. From left, M0WUT, Hugo Cheema-Grubb, M0WJE.

2018 GP6UW QSL Card

2018 GP6UW QSL Card

 

William Eustace, 23/9/18

 

Iceland (TF): 2016

Six CUWS members (Jens DK2AB, Martin G3ZAY, Dom M0BLF, Rob M0VFC, Dan M0WUT, and William M0ZXA) visited Iceland between the 11th and 18th September 2016.

Three days (20th – 22nd) were spent operating from the Westman Islands (“Vestmannaejar” – EU-071) and the others were spent exploring the country – locations visited include Reykajvík, Ϸingvellir, Geysir, Gullfoss, Seljalandsfoss, Landmannalaugar, Skaftafell, Jökulsárlón and Skógarfos – quite the whistle-stop tour! Our APRS track is shown below.

Despite all this travelling, some extra time allowed us to opportunistically activate an Icelandic SOTA, Hjörleifshöfði (TF/SL-216.) This was the first time it had been activated, as the Icelandic SOTA association was commenced two weeks earlier on September 1st.

For QSL information see QRZ.com entries for home callsigns.

Ascension Island (ZD8): 2013

From Monday 2nd – Friday 6th December 2013, G3VFC, G3ZAY, M0BLF, M0VFC and M1BXF will be operating as ZD8UW from Green Mountain, Ascension Island.

We’ll be active on 40m-10m, mainly SSB and CW. (Being equatorial, there’s little point in taking the extra weight for 80m, I’m afraid.) There may also be some WSPR operation overnight. The best time for the path to the UK is likely to be in the mid-mornings on 17m and 15m, or the mid-afternoons on 12m and 15m. We’ll be operating with Elecraft K3s.

We won’t have internet access at the QTH, but logs should be uploaded roughly daily to Clublog. The logs will also go on LoTW once we’re back, but we can’t apply for the LoTW certificate in advance as we won’t be collecting the radio licence until we get to Ascension. QSL will be via M0OXO.

See also: Ascension Island (ZD8): 2009

Faroe Islands (OY): 2013

Five CUWS members (Martin G3ZAY, Michael M0GXM, Greg MD0IGD, William M0ZXA and Gavin M1BXF) went to the Faroe Islands from the 17th to 24th June 2013.

We stayed in three youth hostels – for the first four nights we were in the Faroese capital Torshavn, then one night in Gjov and two in Sandavagur. The equipment was two Elecraft K3’s, one Yaesu FT100 and a Yaesu FT-817, plus a Spectrum transverter for 4m. Antennas included vertical antennas, vertical dipoles, slanted dipoles and a quad antenna for 6m.

QSL info:

QSL for OY/G3ZAY, OY/M1BXF and OY/M0ZXA via G3ZAY.

QSL for OY/M0GXM via M0GXM.

QSL for OY/MD0IGD via MD0IGD.

(Details correct on QRZ.com 2013-10-02)

For more information about the islands, see the Wikipedia entry

Miquelon Island (FP): 2011

In September 2011, 6 CUWS members (G3ZAY, G4EAG, M0BLF, M0VFC, M0TOC and M1BXF) went to Miquelon Island. Miquelon is the largest island in St Pierre et Miquelon, which is a French-owned territory just off the coast of Newfoundland.

We stayed in the Motel de Miquelon, a very ham-friendly establishment right on the coast of Miquelon.

QSL info:

QSL via home calls – for cards from multiple operators, QSL via G3ZAY.

Log analysis

A total of 17920 contacts were made with 124 DXCC entities using RTTY, SSB and CW, on 10m – 80m.

The log contained 9272 unique callsigns, with 74 people who worked all 6 operators.

For more information about the island, see the Wikipedia entry

For more information about the DXpedition, see http://dx.camb-hams.com/dx-peditions/cuws-in-fp/

Ascension Island (ZD8): 2009

Six CUWS members (Martin G3ZAY, Michael G7VJR, Tom M0TJH, Gordon G3USR, Simon G4EAG and Hugo M0HSW) were on the air as ZD8UW from Ascension Island (AF-003) between 1 January and 9 January 2009. We were active on all HF bands, both SSB and CW.

We were on Green Mountain, with a clear view to the horizon from about 210 degrees to 45 degrees. Other paths were totally blocked by the mountain.

QSL info:

We don’t need your card if you don’t need ours! If you are happy with an LoTW confirmation then please save the planet.

Log search
All QSOS are also in LOTW

Log analysis:

We were spotted 2110 times.

Best DX: ZL taking into account our QTH! Also KH6 (even on 80M), KL7, UA0 on 160M, various exotica such as PY0, YS, HK, EP, JY, XW, OD, EL, OA, ST, HS.

Weirdest DX: TN on 160M (Republic of Congo). Not far away, but truly rare. Other African DX included Cameroon and Angola.

Band	CW	SSB	DXCCs
160	1452	0	70
80	1181	521	58
40	1133	1825	80
30	1661	0	61
20	1170	3139	100
17	1051	2286	87
15	765	1240	80
12	193	297	27
Total QSOs	17914		
Total DXCCs	125		
CW	48.05%		
SSB	51.95%		

For more information about the island, see the Wikipedia entry

Les Minquiers (GH): 2007

gh6uw

Cambridge University Wireless Society (CUWS) regularly undertakes short IOTA or SOTA expeditions, and, normally once per year, operates from somewhere in northern Europe. Recent activities have included Iceland (2005), The Faroes (2006) and Svalbard (2007).

2007 is our 75th year on the air, and has been particularly busy, with IOTA trips to St Kilda, and most recently to Les Minquiers (The Minkies) in the Channel Islands, near Jersey.

Location and History

The Minkies (EU-99) are a large collection of rocks approximately 10 miles south of Jersey (QRA IN88xx); they are part of a reef, which can be seen on clear days at low tide from the southern coast of Jersey. However, Jersey has some of the largest tidal ranges in the world, and only a few of the rocks are permanently above the sea line.

The most significant island is Maîtresse, which is about 50m long and 20m wide. It is steeped in history and has an assortment of around ten stone cottages in various states of repair, including the most southerly toilet in Britain (often the subject of QSL cards in the past – see http://www.seapaddler.co.uk/Toilet.JPG). There is no power or running water, but there is mobile telephone reception.

Following a long-running (but friendly) dispute between Britain and France, the reef, along with the nearby Ecrehous, was awarded to Jersey by the International Court of Justice in 1953. They made the news headlines again in 1998 when there was a French ‘invasion’, which lasted one day.

The Minkies are close to both France and Jersey, but the waters around them are treacherous, and most mariners avoid the entire area, following an extensive network of buoys to avoid the possibility of running aground on the rocks. It is this difficulty of access which makes EU-099 an enigmatic and attractive target for radio expeditions.

CUWS Expedition

Our visit to the Minkies (IOTA EU-099) took place between 3 – 5 September, 2007. We were pleased to use the unusual Jersey club prefix, giving us the callsign GH6UW. The team consisted of alumni: Martin G3ZAY, Dominic M0BLF, Tim M0TDG and Michael G7VJR.

Early discussions in April 2007 with Jersey contacts revealed that visiting the Minkies would not be possible without a degree of support from the local harbour in St Helier. A previous radio expedition had run into difficulties during the IOTA contest in 2004, and as a result there was some reluctance to conduct another radio trip without additional reassurances and planning. Indeed, our initial request to go to the Minkies was declined immediately.

For CUWS, any expedition comes with the additional responsibility of representing an internationally recognised University. In this case, we felt it was best to persevere. Further correspondence followed, and our plans were eventually accepted, having now explained our approach and willingness to treat the islands with care. This, however, was not all.

We were delighted to now receive an offer of transportation to the Minkies from the Jersey coast guard, and use of the Jersey States building on Maîtresse. Suggested times to make good use of the tides and advice on the trip were also given to us. This additional help gave us a great head start; we would have a roof over our head and would be able to avoid using an expensive chartered boat, and side-step some obvious problems with the benefit of local knowledge.

Getting There

We flew into Jersey cheaply, but this gave us an added problem of carrying only what our hold baggage could contain. When it comes to radio equipment, power supplies and linears are never light enough.

After hiring a car, there was just enough time to shop for provisions, obtain water and fuel and a Honda generator on Jersey. As the tidal waters dictated our departure time around 1pm on Monday 3 September, we were sure to double check that we had everything we would need to be fully ready for departure. A frantic morning!

After ferrying our equipment down to the Albert Quay in St Helier, we were amazed to be invited aboard the Duke of Normandy, a 500 tonne vessel which is normally in full-time use manoeuvring cargo ships and the like. Our kit was loaded onboard and we departed, in perfect summer conditions. GPS maps and sonar equipment showed our progress into ever more complex shipping lanes around the Minkies. When we reached Maîtresse (about 1 hour later), we transferred to a smaller craft that had been towed by the Duke Of Normandy, and disembarked onto the shores of the island.

Arriving is a special moment on any expedition. The weather was perfect as we came ashore. I will not forget the clear, shallow waters and the wonderful weather that graced our entire trip to the Minkies – we were treated to beautiful sunrises and sunsets, and luxurious summer weather. My fears of having to abandon our trip due to poor weather (remember it flooded in July!) were unfounded.

Although rocky, Maîtresse and the outlying rocks are charismatic and charming, and to be able to swim in the sea was the ultimate refreshment.

On the air

As we carried our equipment to the top of the slip way and onto dry land, our priorities quickly turned to commencing our radio activities. We had just 48 hours to make as many contacts as possible.

We were soon able to erect a 20m vertical antenna on top of the highest point, using a 10m SOTA pole. 9 elevated radials were used. The rig was an Icom 706 with 300W (using an inexpensive RM500 AM/SSB linear). Dominic M0BLF began CQing on 20m SSB, logging to WinTest in DXpedition mode. A pile up was quickly underway and Dominic reached a rate of 180 Qs/hr.

We were keen to put two stations on the air, and had brought a range of 100W Dunestar band-pass filters. The next station to go on the air was for 30M CW, which we judged would be a good, long-haul band which would benefit from our 360 degree salt water take off. Using an Elecraft K2/100 (completed just days before the expedition and barely tested), Michael G7VJR began operating on 10MHz using a lead acid battery outside. Within 15 minutes or so, GH6UW was split and listening up around 2kHz. The DXCluster had, presumably, started to draw attention to our activities.

With no mutual interference, we were delighted to be putting out a solid signal on phone and CW simultaneously. The logs continued to fill, and as evening quickly arrived we began to receive more and more attention on the bands. Pile-ups became raucous and sustained, and we were soon working friends in the States and Japan, although Europe was giving us good rates and we felt it best to take all callers.

With time now less of an issue, Martin and Tim had arranged meals and tidied up to remove dust and grime from the buildings where we were lodging. Martin soon had dinner sorted, and Tim was able to take care of the generator, and take over on the 30M station. Incidentally, the Honda EU10 1KW generator was quiet, reliable, portable and efficient – it consumed only half the fuel we expected.

Our operation continued during the night on CW, with Tim and Dom putting in the hours, and come morning we commenced SSB operations again. We were now ready to try 40M SSB, so a third antenna was erected to support our 40M dipole. With this extra choice we had a better chance of working EU during the day, and we would be ready for the DX later.

We were disappointed that 40M did not give us much access to ‘G’, although we did appreciate the perseverance of those stations who were able to break the EU wall and work us, including club members back in Cambridge, Christian M0SCH and Christian M0TBF. Stations in GU and GJ were super-strong so we were delighted to add some locals to the log, too.

Other than a brief (< 100 QSOs) spell on 17M, we were content to use 20M, 30M and 40M. Although an 80M dipole was constructed, we dismantled it for practical reasons – given the choice, we favoured 20M and hoped for more DX. We were fortunate indeed (SFI 66) to work many JA stations. Of particular note, though, were ZL1BYZ, VK4BUI and VP8NO who were able to work us on CW – a wonderful surprise.

These days, even a small operation will suffer some deliberate QRM, and so it turned out to be for us, too. We were disgracefully jammed on 20M and 40M in particular, and had to avoid split operations on 40M as this seemed to reduce the problem somewhat.

While not operating, I might add that we were able to enjoy Mediterranean conditions on Maîtresse. Swimming, photography and sleeping were popular past times while not operating on the radio. Our stay was also livened up by a few visits by passing yachts and even an ex-military French telegrapher, who was overjoyed to see us using morse code. We also met two contemporary dance students who were staying in one of the other huts, and were kind enough to tolerate our intrusion (before our departure, spare food and supplies were transferred to them).

On Wednesday 5th September, we were picked up by the Pilot boat from Jersey Harbours and returned to St Helier, a little sunburned, but very happy to have made our mark on HF and given EU-099 a fresh airing.

We spent a few more days on Jersey, staying at the Jersey YHA near St Martin (in its own right, a perfect HF location on a cliff top with spacious grounds). While there we met GJ7DNI by chance, having spotted a Versa tower passing by on his trailer. By Friday, we were unable to resist a visit to the Jersey Beer Festival in St Helier, before flying back to England the next day.

QSO Statistics

We made a total of 3654 QSOs in just under 48 hours. This was split as shown in the table below:

Band: SSB: CW: Total QSOs As %
40m 951 (51.2%) 906 (48.7%) 1857 50.8%
30m 0 (0%) 693 (100%) 693 18.9%
20m 800 (78.1%) 224 (21.8%) 1024 28.0%
17m 0 (0%) 80 (100%) 80 0.02%
Totals: 1751 (47.9%) 1903 (52.1%) 3654 100%

There are 3083 unique callsigns in the log. 5 people contacted us on four bands, 51 on three bands.

Top five countries: USA (18.0%), Germany (15.0%), European Italy (7.6%), England (6.1%) and European Russia (5.6%).

A total of 86 countries were contacted.

Breakdown by continent: EU (76.7%), NA (19.5%), AS (2.2%), AF (0.7%), SA (0.7%), OC (0.1%).

Online resources

We have a number of online resources related to this trip, as follows:

Expedition summary: http://www.domsmith.co.uk/amateur-radio/dxpeditions/2007/minquiers/

Online log search: http://clublog.g7vjr.org/l.php?log=GH6UW

Expedition video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDY2j0dB-hE

Photographs: http://flickr.com/photos/dnas2/sets/72157601912436618/

Lastly, our QSL manager is Dominic M0BLF. The above links are all included on his page, at the top of the list of URLs above.

Acknowledgements

We are indebted to Jersey Harbours, in particular to Peter Lawrence and Ian Lamy, whose advice alone before the trip was invaluable.

We were fortunate and immensely grateful to also have their help in providing transport and access to the States building on this trip. Their generosity exceeded anything we could have expected – it made such a difference. Thank you again, from all of us at Cambridge University Wireless Society, for dedicating so much of your time to supporting us. It cannot be overstated how much we appreciated your help.

RSGB IOTA Contest 2005

Our entry into this contest could probably be used as the basis of an article entitled “How Not to do a Contest.” We arrived on Heimaey mid-afternoon on Friday. Heimaey is the largest and the only populated island of the Westman Islands which all count for EU-071. The group of G3ZAY, M0TJH and M0BLF who had been on the mainland for a week were joined by M0TDG who flew out from the UK the day before the team headed for islands. The journey to the islands had been somewhat eventful as we had to divert down a bumpy unsealed road around the coast to avoid a blockade by lorry drivers and we also discovered that Iceland’s largest music festival was taking place on the islands the same weekend. Despite all this, it did not take us too long to find the tourist office who then put us in touch with owner of the site where we would be camping. The normal campsite for the island was being used for the festival so we were staying in the local scout site.

Setup began that evening. We were entering the Multi/Single Low Power DXpedition category so all the antennas had to be single element. We started cutting dipoles for each of the contest bands and after the traditional CUWS inability to cut two dipole legs of the same length, we were ready to get on the air. We immediately found that conditions were extremely poor and very little could be heard. We had intended to try to make a lot of QSOs that evening to spread awareness of our activation but there were very few people we could contact. Other problems that we discovered that evening were that the computer cw keyer was not functioning correctly and the IC-706 we brought with us would not power up. Fortunately we had an FT-100 with us also so we still had a working rig. No amount of adjustment, tin foil or harsh language were able to fix these so we called it a night.

The morning of the contest dawned bright and the good bit of news was that M0BLF’s stern bedtime words to the IC-706 the night before had got it working again. However, the cw keyer still caused problems so everything had to be sent manually and a new problem of intermittent S8 QRM that we never positively identified but we suspect came from the imersion heater in the hot water tank. We discovered an on air problem that as our callsign was not the same as the standard CEPT callsign (our call was G6UW/TF) and some operators refused to work us claiming our call was illegal. This did not seem to be a problem during the contest but it is unlikely that we will ever be able to tell. As the last few adjustments to the station were made (including deciding to build a 20m vertical instead of a dipole), the weather began to cloud over very quickly and the wind started to get up. As the contest started, a full Atlantic gale was blowing towards us.

The contest started extremely slowly and it was very difficult to hold a QRG because of our weak signal. Greater success was had with cw although the keying was dodgy at best due to the complicated exchange and the computer keyer not functioning. As the day progressed, the gale outside strengthened and we discovered that the constant shaking of our telescopic masts was causing them to collapse in on themselves and then fall over. This happened several times and to make matters worse, whilst restoring our 20m vertical to a more vertical attitude, the mast snapped around 2m from the base. This was partially fixed but the mast was still notably shorter. As the evening wore on, we found out that the island’s airfield had been shut and some of the tourists trapped by the closure were being put up in scout building we were operating in. This meant we couldn’t use SSB much as it would disturb them too much. At around 0200, the combination of the appalling weather and both antenna masts falling within a couple of minutes of each other, we called it a night for a couple of hours to get a little sleep and allow the weather to improve. The wind had died the next morning and conditions were slightly better on the air allowing a few more contacts but by the time the contest finished, we had been limited to just 314 QSOs which gave us a paltry final score of just 137970 points.

The score breakdown is as follows:

Band CW QSOs SSB QSOs Total QSOs
10m 0 0 0
15m 4 13 17
20m 196 77 273
40m 17 7 24
80m 0 0 0
Total 217 97 314

While this wasn’t a competitive score, it did give us a chance to see a little bit of the islands (though the weather limited this somewhat too) and it was good to provide a multiplier for other stations. Hopefully conditions will be better in the future allowing a much higher score.

Checking reduced the score to 123546. This left us 85th in our category. Not a great result but we did provide a multiplier for quite a few others. Results can be found at http://iotacontest.com/2005/iotaScores.php?q=ims.