M2W – IOTA 2011

This year the club returned to the South Coast for the second time because of the fantastic location with height and space to erect aerials and we would like to thank our Kevin G1KAW for organising this.

This year’s station was using our tried and trusted ICOMs IC756PRO III’s together with the following antennas: 10-15-20M 2 element Quad at 60ft, 10-15-20m Yagi at 35ft, 40M Vertical, 40M dipole and 80M Vertical. All the antennas were painstakingly assembled, erected and adjusted from scratch just for the contest. Thank goodness for the excellent weather. (Special thanks to Kevin G1KAW and Toby M6TBY).

Operation was is in the 3.5, 7, 14, 21 and 28MHz bands.

The mast and three band quad was supplied by Nobby G0VJG and Ralph, M0MYC, as

both joined the team for the IOTA contest. The quad with out doubt gave the main station an edge even over the three-element beam, which was reallocated to our multi finding station.

Within the log book section of our web page you can insert your call sign to see
if we correctly logged your contact with us. QSL cards are advaible using the
RSGB QSL Bureau or on line via Eqsl.

For all those teams and operators around the world who answered our CQ calls
a big ‘thank you’ to you all from the Whitton Amateur Radio Group team, comprising: Garo G0PZA, Colin M0DMJ, Colin 2E0NOC, Kevin G1KAW, Toby M6TBY, Ian G0OFN, Nobby G0VJG and Ralph M0MYC.

Our results; we are hoping subject to confirmation that this year we have bettered last year effort, and even beat our own target. QSO totals were up 17% on last year, at 1808, Multipliers were up by 29% at 354 and the total score was 57% higher than last year, at about 3.6Million points. Last year’s EU005 top score in the 24hour Multi Single category was about 3.0Million, so we are delighted with our performance, given that we are not a fixed station!

We generally found that band conditions were favourable, but we did miss some opportunities on 80M and 15M, in particular on CW. Highlights included being called by a ZL at 7 am on 40M running on our dipole, and some strong BD/BV stations alongside the Russian powerhouses.

Our M2W breakdown per band and mode is as follows;-

We are looking forward to IOTA 2012.