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The story of St. Pietro Island IOTA EU73 IIA TA02
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We
made the decision to partecipate in the IOTA Contest during the spring
months. San Pietro (Cheradi Group)
is an island 3 KM
from the mainland in the Goulf of Taranto in the Jonian Sea and is an
exellent QTH for radio. There is a Navy Base with few militarys and
there are no other inabitants . It has not been very active in the past
so many IOTA and IIA new comers needed it for a new one.We arrived in
the port of leading at 07.30 am and loaded the rigs, antennas and few
bags in a very small military boat, started at 11.00 am and arrived on
tha island after a windy sea trip. We had even bad luck: a dangerous
storm, 40 meter delta loop and 10 meters must broke. We therefore have
to be content with a Yagi installed at very low height . We installed a
second thin must for low
band antennas. At 07.00 pm the antennas were rigged and the two stations
were set up in our impromptu shack.
Navy Base
Our station consist of two Kenwood (TS 870 * TS 850), FL 2100z, AL 811 HX, tribander 3 el., 40 meter sloping dipole, 80 meter inverted vee, PC 386 for main station running EI5DI’s Super Duper S.W. which performed flawlessy throughout the Contest, Laptop 386 for chasing multipliers with Packet Cluster. Our thanks goes to Mike-IK7MCJ sysop of the IK7MCJ-6 Cluster which is located just a few Km from our contest site ( www.qsl.net/ik7mcj ), for the use of the facilities. At 12.30 on the 26th I opened up the run station on 20 meter SSB and the race was on. Me and Vin IK7IMO were determined to better our 1995 score (both operators as IJ7/IK7VJX EU91) and so had decided to hunt and work every multipliers that we heard. Unfortunately consinstely high run-rates on CW were scarce and conditions out side of Europe was bad.
IK7IMO IK7YUA
For the majority of the contest we had an operator on the run station and an operator on the
multipliers station, to help maximise the final score. Most operating
was concentrated on 20 and 40 meter with verygood runs; on 10 and 15
meter conditions was bad. The rate peaked at three per minute, which is
pretty fast for we, maybe the contest message is a too long for island
stations, it would be better without the serial number! We ended
the race with 1224 QSOs and just little of 884.268 points. It would been
better with a good antennas and to have been able to operate all bands
and multipliers. We did not work many in the US and Far East and this
undoubtedly reduced the final score.
Still
we maintained a rate close to one per minute
for the 24 hours. We shall be back in San Pietro Isl. for the
1998 – 99 – 00 contest and we are looking forward to the fabulous
military hospitality, so our special thanks goes to them! The crew was:
Vin IK7IMO, Mike IK7YUA and me. See
you next IOTA Contest…73 de Roby
The island from the military boat
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