This weekend was the RSGB IOTA Contest. The IOTA contest was created in 1993. This is now a major international event, attracting thousands of participants from all over the world. Radio Amateurs travel to islands around the globe, putting them on the air, making contacts with other islands and with those who are chasing islands. The IOTA contest takes place on the HF bands and is based on the RSGB Islands on the Air programme which recently celebrated its 50th anniversary.  IOTA promotes radio contacts with stations located on islands around the world to enrich the experience of all active on the amateur bands and, to do this, it draws on the widespread mystique surrounding islands.

During the weekend I was indulging another of my hobbies exhibiting a stationary engine at the Netley Marsh Steam and Craft Fair however it seemed like a good location to experiment with portable operation. I took my Yaesu FT891 which I have mounted in a small pelicase (actually a cheaper alternate brand).

I found a suitable location in the field where I was exhibiting, a suitable large oak tree provided an excellent structure to support my 20m Double Bazooka antenna in an inverted V configuration with about 10m elevation in the center and 5m at the ends. The antenna was orientated with the broadside (maximum gain) in an East/West orientation. Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures during operation as by the time I remembered it was too dark. Here is one photo I did manage to take showing the antenna configuration:

As usual I didn’t compete seriously in the contest, I was using it as an opportunity to test propagation and experiment with a portable configuration. Based on coverage area propagation predictions from Proppy. I operated from 2000 – 2200 UTC which was when propagation was expected to start improving towards a peak at around 0100 (past my bed-time)!

In the two hours of operation at 20w SSB I was able to make 15 successful QSOs, 8 with Island stations giving me a modest score of 938 points but scoring points wasn’t my aim. I proved a good configuration and achieved some good long-range communications including trans-Atlantic communication into the USA and Canada as well as ticking off a new country with 3V8LL in Tunisia! Here is a map of the QSOs from DK5EW’s excellent online mapping tool: