GD6YB/P Isle of Man DXpedition for IOTA 1997

Members of the Bristol Contest Group decided to venture into new territory by entering the 1997 Islands on the Air (IOTA) contest from the Isle of Man. It was certainly an experience... read about it below... and we were also quite successful in the contest - placed 12th out of 71 stations in the Islands Multi-op section.

GD6YB/P Operators (left to right): Alan G3XSV, Vic G0WKW, Neil M0AXF, Matt G7ORR, Steve M0AHH, Robin G3TKF, Barry G0CFM

Here's the story ...

• We hired a 17-seater minibus, to take what seemed like two tons of equipment to the island. Every space was crammed full for the long drive to Liverpool

• We managed to make it to our crossing on the SeaCat from Liverpool (below) despite the minibus developing an awful noise in the engine on the way.

• The bus finally broke down when we got to our site on the Isle of Man, but Manx Auto Rescue got us going again. As you can see from this picture we had a pretty rugged spot on top of a 400ft cliff.

• First night, tents were battered by wind and rain - must get some stronger tent pegs !

• 16 hours to go before the contest and all antennas were perched on the cliff edge (see picture). Getting 59+ reports from west coast USA !!

  The A3S before the gales blew it over	The antennas on the cliff edge

• 4 hours before contest start - generator not working properly. We asked a team of coastguards who happened to pass, if they happened to have a generator. By an enormous stroke of luck we were able to borrow a generator from a local builder known to one of the coastguards. We found out how friendly and trusting the Manx people are.

• Contest started - enormous pile ups ! Why isn't it like this at home ?

• As you can imagine our signal was pretty strong to the west. This is the view over the Irish Sea from the bottom of the mast. The antenna in the picture is a 40m/80m dipole strung out 400ft over the water.

Panic number 1 - 12 hours in, and at 1200 QSOs SuperDuper told us it was going to run out of memory. When is CT going to support IOTA ? Found more memory by running MSDOS under Windows 95.

Panic number 2 - Gale force winds blew brand new Cushcraft A3S beam over ! Luckily it fell the right way, otherwise we would have been trawling the Irish Sea for it. A bit mangled, but we put it back up. The 4 ele monobander was looking a bit tipsy too, but it still seemed to work.

The sun shone at last. Things were looking up ! A superb breakfast from our masterchef Barry, G0CFM, and everything seemed to be going well again.

Panic number 3 - 2000 QSOs, SuperDuper runs out of memory again. *$@#& !!! We had to resort to using the backup laptop where SD seemed to work better under Windows 3.1. We lost about half an hour in total dealing with these memory problems under Super Duper.

We were quite satisfied with the score, but convinced we could have done better.

What this space for next year !!

Time to go - taking the antennas apart

Our final score and details of the equipment and operators:

QSO Details:

Equipment:

• TX/RX FT1000 + TL922 LINEAR
• Power o/p 400W
• Antennas 4 EL MONOBAND YAGI ON 20M
• 3 EL CUSHCRAFT A3S ON 15M AND 10M
• DIPOLES FOR 40M AND 80M
• ANTENNAS AT 20FT ON CLIFFTOP 400FT ABOVE THE SEA.