On 29th July a bunch of keen sdarc members arrived at a field in the back-of-beyond (well, near Swindon actually) to start erecting equipment for the weekend's 'Islands on the Air' HF contest. The site is nice and flat, away from any major conurbation and best of all the ground is holding water. Three towers, two wire antennae, the club ex-army tent, generator, plus all the rig equipment and dc supplies needed putting together. >Two of the towers were to take 3 element tribanders (20/15/10) and the other Jon's 10m quad. Wire antannae were a G5RV running between two towers, and 80/40 dipoles at right angles to the G5 running from a tower to a very helpful oak tree. Chris (AJA) as usual got to play with his crossbow! Rigs were a MkV field for the main station, and an MP for the spotter, both feeding 400w linears. For logging we were using James's (M1DST) 'DSTLog' software duly configured for the points system used in the contest. The club was ready to roll in plenty of time for the 12.00 utc start on Saturday with I have to say a very profesional installation indeed.

We were blessed with excellent propagation on 10 15 and 20 to start the contest and we had pile-ups within minutes of starting! 10 and 15 held up just about all of the daylight hours, and remarkably 20 stayed open all night. 80 and 40 provided lots of multipliers during darkness. When 15 opened again early Sunday morning we had the biggest pile-ups I have ever experienced, ably managed by those who had sensibly got some sleep! However, pile-ups don't necessarily mean points (non-island contacts=3 points, islands=15), and spotting became the key strategy as the morning went on.

So, how did we do? Subject to thorough log checking we made 923 contacts, the best ever sdarc total, and although this is nowhere near getting us into the top table (put yourself on an iota referenced island in the middle of Europe and think about the catchment!) we are all delighted with the result. Best of all everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves - we don't enter contests just for the winning.

Some brief stats:
total contacts: 923
by continent: EU-791, NA-80, SA-21, AS-16, AF-13, OC-2
by band: 10-145, 15-339, 20-196, 40-169, 80-61

We also managed to work 7 stations on all bands.